The benefits of the Hello-Picasa services are that they're affiliated with Google and allow users to browse all the same photos together while chatting about them.
I could upload hundreds of pics almost instantly and a dozen others (by invitation only) could browse them, picking and choosing the ones they wanted, from a single screen.
I've used it for about two years now, and highly recommend it, as privacy is not an issue with this service.
Also, there are a number of other services that seem to do the same thing. Does Google claim to now be the owner of your photos? I ask that because Google's g-mail service seems to claim to be the owner of your email, based on what another poster said on this thread.