Google on Monday announced its latest social-web acquisition: Picnik. A complement to Google’s Picasa and a partner with services like Yahoo’s Flickr and Photobucket, Picnik lets users edit photos in the browser. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Brian Axe, a product management director at Google, noted the rise in people sharing and storing photos online. In addition to photo-sharing sites, Facebook and MySpace are also driving traffic to online photos within their social-networking communities. In fact, Facebook leads the photo-sharing market in the United States and worldwide.
“This enhances Picasa and is consistent with Google’s cloud strategy, which also extends to mobile,” said Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. “It provides a photo editor but without the need to download and install any software. When Google netbooks start coming out, this will be a part of that experience undoubtedly as well. Those will also have no software other than the OS and will require all functionality to be accessed via the browser.”
Google Won’t Change Picnik
With Picnik, Google offers people a way to edit photos in a web browser instead of client software on the desktop. Picnik lets people crop, touch up, resize, rotate and add cool effects to photos and was one of the first to bring photo editing to the cloud.
Picnik’s partners include Picasa, Flickr, Facebook, Webshots, Photobucket, MySpace and Webs. The web-based software works on Mac, Windows and Linux computers. Picnik is free, but people can upgrade to a premium service for $25 a year.
“We’re not announcing any significant changes to Picnik today, though we’ll be working hard on integration and new features,” Axe wrote on The Official Google Blog. “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…