Google adds ads to Picasa photo site
Another Google Web property is getting advertisements. It's only a test for some users in the United States, and ads show only in search results at the photo-sharing site.
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Google has begun showing ads on search results at its Picasa site for sharing photos, part of its gradual expansion of advertising across its numerous Web properties.
Pages for photos and galleries doesn't show ads, but search results do for some people. The ads are located in a yellow-tinted "sponsored links" section above the photo results for some in the United States. (See screenshot below.)
"As part of our ongoing commitment to innovation, and to help users find new and better ways of getting the information they're looking for, we are currently showing text ads on the search results pages for Picasa Web Albums. This experiment is only visible to a small number of U.S.-based users," the company said in a statement. The ad experiment has been running for "a few weeks," Google said.
Google, trying to increase profitability, has been spreading ads to sites that previously lacked them. Among them: Google Finance, Google News, image search, Google Maps, and Google Earth.
(Via the unofficial Google Operating System blog.)