Picasaweb gets search

Google have updated Picasaweb with a number of features, key amongst which is the ability to search through Picasaweb photos, together with the ability to order prints from photos, and now anyone not just those with a paid hosting plan can upload videos.  The briefest of details are available on the What's New page.

In Google's own words, the additions are

Anyone can upload videos using Picasa
Finally, a way to share those digital camera movies with friends. Learn more

Search and tag your photos. Search over your friend's public photos
Hey, we're Google. Search across album descriptions, captions, our new tags and more.

Order prints and photo products
If one of our print providers sells it, you can order it.

(I note that despite updating this What's New page, they still haven't corrected the link in the footer, which still links to the Mac Tools Terms of Service  rather than the Picasaweb Terms of Service).

 

The search still does not allow for a full search over all Picasaweb pages - it mostly searches through your own albums, or those that you mark as favorites.  However, it will search through any other single album that you are currently in, even if that is not one of your favorites (indeed you don't even have to be logged in to do such a search).

The ordering of prints currently offers two print providers - Photoworks and Shutterfly (Both US based, even if you are not a US user of Picasaweb), but that thankfully also works without you having to be logged in to Picasaweb.  To avoid favoring one of these providers over the other, they are presented in a random order.

The features are still a little rough around the edges, for example the help message you get when there are no search matches contains two typos that I spotted - Sometimes you'll only want results that include an exact phrase. In this case, simply put quotation marks around your search teams. For example, you could be type "the long winding road".

However, with these additions, together with the recent ability for non US customers to purchase paid hosting plans, Picasaweb is slowly turning into the killer photo hosting site it should have been from the start.

Update: It looks like Google have discovered some major problem with the search function, and have temporarily withdrawn the feature.  Less than an hour after I posted, the feature is no longer available (though it's still documented on the What's New page).  The Order Prints feature is still available.

Update: A few hours later and the features have returned.  There's also a post about the new features on the main Google blog.