In a blog item yesterday, Todd Bogdan, a Google software engineer, said the company has released Picasa 3.5 with geotagging functionality. It's also added name-tagging functionality, just as Facebook users and subscribers to other social media applications like Flickr have been used to for some time.

"In addition to name tags, Picasa 3.5 has integrated Google Maps, so you can easily geotag your photos or view the locations of already-tagged photos on a map. And using our totally redesigned import process, you can now import photos from your camera and upload the photos to Picasa Web Albums in one easy step," Bogdan wrote.

But like most things at Google, don't expect this to be a one-off addition of functionality to a single application. In the coming months, Google will be launching its Google Wave technology for social networking. It's also getting more aggressive with Google Apps and helping to build the open-source Android operating system for smartphones and netbooks. The company has also said it will be launching a Google Chrome OS for PCs and netbooks. Don't expect any of these software projects to be built in a vacuum, but do expect each of them to borrow from Google's technology everywhere.

Google's mapping and mashup technology could easily be integrated into many of its forthcoming projects.

Does this give Google one more edge over its nemesis, Microsoft? That will depend on how Microsoft responds in development of its own mapping technology and application software.