Since Google announced the closing of Panoramio we, the Panoramio founders, have got hundreds of messages from Panoramio users from all around the world that want to keep the Panoramio Community alive.

For 9 years Panoramio users have been carefully taking, selecting, sharing and manually geolocating 80 millions of photos for countless hours. They gave Google the right to display their photos in Earth and Maps. It is fair to ask Google to keep the Panoramio community alive in exchange.

Panoramio is not just a website, nor a tool like Google Reader, Panoramio is a group of people that care about good pictures and love to illustrate the World. Users have become friends at Panoramio, they have met personally all around the world, even one met her husband at Panoramio... read the reasons below the petition to know about more personal stories. Panoramio is about people that shared tens of thousands of photos. They made a great effort that benefited Google.

Google offered users to migrate to Google Views. This new service looks great, but Views is not Panoramio and it never will be. Every community is unique by itself, like any group of people is different from any other one. Many Panoramio users don't feel that they fit into Google Views mainstream snapshots. You can’t force anyone to merge with a different group of people.

No reply was possible in the closing announcement in the Panoramio forum. Users don’t like the scary migration plan through Google Drive with two steps. Users got broken promises of keeping the site alive just few days ago.  Some core features for the community are going to be lost (faves updates, comments…). No wonder why Panoramio users don’t want to migrate to Views, the migration as planned will kill the Panoramio Community. We wrote a detailed document “Open questions about the Panoramio migration” with our take. 

Sign this petition to ask Google to keep the Panoramio Community alive.

 

Featured testimonies:

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- From Belgium

Please, let Panoramio continue.

I'm 86 now, and still hoping to contribute to show the beauty of nature through my pictures and gives me the courage to move every day, 1.5 hours,

and it would be sad to lose all the friends... will surely it is a great loss to the many people their hobby ... all to try to save it, many thanks, best wishes

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- From USA

Trikermike (Mike Clyburn) was a great friend I met in real life through Panoramio. Such was his love for Panoramio, he felt moved to produce a book featuring poetry inspired by photos taken by his Pano friends. He spent nearly two years getting permission from those friends to feature their photos, and in finding a suitable publisher. The other purpose of the book was raise funds for a charity that helped disabled achieve their goals - Mike was quite severely disabled himself. His "Wee Book(let)" and his many comments are his legacy to all his friends and it will be devastating to see his contributions callously deleted when Panoramio is destroyed in the name of "Progress". Mike died on the 16th of April this year and one saving grace is that he didn't see what Google intend doing to his beloved community.

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- From Austria

I have met my love on Panoramio eight years ago. It started all with a comment on a photo, that finally made us meet and close the gap of 1300 kilometers between Paris and Vienna that seperated us.

The numerous pages in Panoramio with our mutual comments are for us the lucky landscape of our meeting and also of our artistic exchange and development. Panoramio therefore is infinitely precious to us.

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- From the Netherlands

Panoramio is more than a hobby to me, It became a part of my life! This may sound dramatic, but thats the way it is... I hope that there is a way to keep Panoramio alife otherwise it would be a big loss, to mw and to the world! Martin Klumper
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- From India

panoramio is the facebook of photographers of the world

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From Hungary

Panormio is a part of my life. Community that inspire me to travel!

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- From Romania

Panoramio community is very important for me . I am a member of it since March 2008 , I have a lot of friends all over the world , having constant discussions along the time with them .I traveled with Panoramio in so many places ... In my country , Romania , we had pano meetings that were great , we get there shirts and badges with Panoramio logo , meet a lot of wonderful people and keep in touch with them all those years , visiting , become friends . In my town I have friends from Pano and about twice times a month we meet and take pictures together at different events .

Guys from Google, do you realize that you have created extraordinary phenomenon named Panoramio??? Do not destroy it !!!

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- From Finland

The PANORAMIO photos are not just a pile of pixels with automatic EXIF data, split seconds, ISO values, camera brands and coordinates. The real information and "EXIF data" of PANORAMIO photos are below the photos: the stories, texts, discussions, descriptions and photography details. Written by the very well working, genuinely international community of users. PANORAMIO community is real people often telling and discussing about the photos and the places in them.

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- From Poland

Were like a one big family, and that family is here on that webside!

keep it alive!
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- From Italy

Con panoramio viaggio col pensiero :)

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- From Austria

Ich liebe Panoramio
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- From Romania

Sometime, two people come to my work and said : we are looking for csimena, we are some friends of Panoramio :)

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- Viktor Viktorov from RUSIA

It's part of my life!!!

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- Fredy Kim, Wide, Switzerland

I supported Google with more than 14'000 pictures for free! Termination would be a disaster for me!

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Sofia Siatravani, Βόλος,  Greece 

We love Panoramio! 

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Pasapa Saez Pardo, San Javier, Spain

Me ha cambiado la vida desde que estoy en Panoramio, soy feliz......
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Petr Krtička, Praha, Czech Republic

Panoramio is important to me.