Google acquires online photo editor Picnik – future for Flickr unsure
Google is continuing its recent spending spree which has already seen it buy reMail and Aardvark over the last few weeks. This time, it’s acquired Picnik, a well-known and very popular online photo editing suite. The question is what this means for third-party sites which use Picnik, the biggest of which is Flickr.
Google is already a technology giant, and it seems determined to grow even bigger. It has acquired more than 60 companies since its inception, three in just the the first two months of 2010. In February, Google bought both social search startup Aardvark, and email search startup reMail. Now, on the first day of March, Google has added Picnik to its ever-growing list of purchases.
Picnik is an online photo editing suite that’s been around since 2005. It was one of the first efforts to try and put photo editing in the cloud, eschewing the need for a dedicated desktop client. Picnik has grown substantially over the last five years and now boasts almost 2 million unique users a month. Those users have a choice of the basic free service or the $25-a-year premium service.
Picnik announced the acquisition on its blog, and insisted nothing will change in the immediate future. Few details are known about the deal, except that the whole 20-person Picnik team will become employees of Google as part of the search giant’s Seattle office.
Questions are being raised as to what this means for Flickr and the other third-party sites which use Picnik in some capacity. Google is quite clear on this matter, stating:
We’re not announcing any significant changes to Picnik today, though we’ll be working hard on integration and new features. As well, 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.
Google also told TechCrunch:
We believe that openness is always the best approach and will allow third-party sites to continue to integrate with Picnik. People should be able to pull photos from other photo sharing sites, make edits with Picnik and save to whatever site they choose.
However, Yahoo, which owns Flickr, has yet to address the issue, with its PR company instead saying, “Thanks for getting in touch. At this point we don’t have a comment on the acquisition, but will let you know when and if we have information to share.” Which sounds like a position intended to buy time, which would imply something other than a continuation of the partnership.
If Flickr was to drop Picnik then it would become a less-appealing service. And if Google was to decide to integrate Picnik into Picasa at the expense of all its competitors then those third-party sites wouldn’t now have a choice in the matter.
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