Google snacks on Picnik

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 2 Mar 2010 at 07:34

Google has once again dipped into its formidable cash reserves to acquire online photo editing service, Picnik.

Picnik - a long-time favourite in the PC Pro office - allows you to make reasonably sophisticated photo edits through the web browser. The site offers a selection of free tools, as well as additional features through a premium subscription service.

It will perhaps be most familiar to users of the Yahoo-owned photo-sharing site, Flickr, which uses Picknik as its default photo editor. It's not clear whether the Google acquisition will result in the swift termination of that deal, although Google states on its blog that "we'd like to continue supporting all existing Picnik partners so that users will continue to be able to add their photos from other photo sharing sites, make edits in the cloud and then save and share to all relevant networks."

Picnik also insists that "nothing is changing right away", but says that the acquisition "means we can think big".

"Google processes petabytes of data every day, and with their worldwide infrastructure and world-class team, it is truly the best home we could have found," reads an announcement on the Picnik blog. "Under the Google roof we’ll reach more people than ever before, impacting more lives and making more photos more awesome."

The terms of the Picnik acquisition have not been disclosed.

Just a fortnight ago, Google acquired mobile email service Remail, and then swiftly removed the company's app from the iPhone App Store.