Google has acquired online photo editing site Picnik, according to a blog post made by the photo editing startup today. Google also announced the acquisition on its blog. The entirety of Picnik’s blog post is embedded below.Terms of the deal were not disclosed in either posts.
Picnik is one of the fastest growing photo sites on the web. Picnik is a powerful, cloud-based photo editor that is integrated directly into Flickr, SmugMug and other photo repositories. Interestingly, Picnik is Flickr’s default photo editor. I’m assuming that will discontinue with the acquisition. It would make sense that Google would fold Picnik’s technology into its photo sharing product and Flickr competitor Picasa, which has some basic editing offerings but doesn’t compare to Picnik’s vast editing technologies.
Competing online photo editors include Fotoflexer and Photoshop.com.Picnik offers a base version of its photo editor for free, and subscription model for a more feature-rich offering. When we spoke to the startup’s CEO Jonathan Sposato a year ago, Picnik was cashflow positive, a little more than two years after launch.
Google is on a bit of a shopping spree; the search giant bought iPhone email app reMail, and social search startup Aardvark in a matter of weeks.
When Bitnik, Inc was created, our founders envisioned making great software for real people and giving users the power to edit digital photos in their browser, without having to purchase or download complicated software. While our first office in 2005 only had two desks, today we’ve grown to 20 employees and have become the world’s most fun online photo editor, with millions of visitors every month. As we’ve grown together over the years, we’ve worked hard to build a company of great people creating great software. We think our emphasis on strong partnerships, a fun culture and you, our users, is what has made Picnik so awesome.
And all this leads us to today’s exciting news: we’ve just been acquired by Google! What does this mean for Picnik? It 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. Under the Google roof we’ll reach more people than ever before, impacting more lives and making more photos more awesome.
What does this mean for you Picnikers? Nothing is changing right away, but Picnik now has more potential than ever before. The team that built Picnik from the grass up will continue making advanced and powerful photo-editing easier, more intuitive and more fun, so say tuned to hear about all the cool new stuff we’re working on. We want to thank you all for being great users, pushing us to grow and do big things. So thank you all for your continued support, and Happy Picniking!
So, Google buys a service, that is being used by Yahoo inside Flickr!
Interesting!
Just wait a little longer until Google buy the whole flic.kr website and see yahoo shutting the site down.. wheuu. Oh well I guess a company is only as good as its CEO, huh?
You mean this one: http://bit.ly/is-carol-bartz-a-loser
Very interesting indeed!
Picnik is Flash-based. I guess iPad / iPhone users won’t have access…
Android devices (shipping devices 60000 per day) and every other smart phone in the World have a key differentiator between them and the iPhone –
Flash!
Let’s see what The People decide…
Yes, because there will be no other apps on iphones and ipads to do simple photo editing.
http://mobile.photoshop.com/iphone/
You’re missing the point, dude.
This is just one little example of a tidal wave of Flash that’s going to rain on iPhone’s parade.
Stay tuned…
You do realize that photoshop.com is an Adobe (owners of Flash) product?
Good buy for Google. Picnic is such a sharp product. Hopefully they will integrate it well with picasa/gmail. If they do it would really increase their potential.
I agree 100%. Picnik is an excellent app.
Jeez….google is buying up everyone these days!
Google is filling out its online ecosystem so that once inside Google’s world, users won’t have to go to another website to accomplish the computing/internet/social media tasks.
uh oh! i see this being ported over to picasa and then android through the gallery3d.
Apple who? You cant fuck with google i am convinced.
Could this mean less Premium features, and more sharing opportunities from the app itself? Let’s hope so!
Great news for Seattle! Kudos to the Picnik team!
I love Picnik, hopefully Google doesn’t relegate this to the same acquisition corner they stuck Dodgeball and other promising applications into.
But good move on their part. I used Picnik for 5 minutes before deciding to pay for the premium version and am still impressed with how easy they make photo editing.
When you use the word “assuming” do you really mean “guessing” or do you have some actual evidence?
Wonder how Sumopaint and Aviary will react to this. A formidable opponent they have now.
Nice job Yahoo with letting this technology go to Google after it was already widely used in flickr.
Yet one more example of how Yahoo has become so inept.
Google is slowly buying every single thing I use. Picnik’s awesome and has become faster for resizing than local apps. Integrating this technology into Google’s products could have huge ramifications. Congrats Picnikers
…and that’s the point of Google buying and/or building all these features into its online world: one-stop place for everything so you don’t have to go to a non-Google property
Who is Google going to buy next? http://www.googlepicnic.com
THE NEED BATCH EDITING BAD.
I love Picnik and would hate to see it go the way of other companies Google has swallowed up and adversely affected. It’s my favorite online photo editing/manipulation tool by far…and it still maintains the sense of fun that start-ups initially enjoy. Hoping for the best.
Picnik is one of the sites that really uses the Flash platform properly. They know what they’re doing and they prove just how awesome Flash is.
Yahoo, too late again.
We love the online photo editing features of Picnik. Great acquisition.
I used Picnik because it’s integrated in so many places, but I kind of felt ripped off by the service charging 25 a year where so many charge nothing.
But ever since TechCrunch did an article about how Picnik offered free premium features to everyone (http://techcrunch.com/2008/02/27/picnik-now-offers-premium-features-for-free/), which, if ever true quickly ended.
I know, I may just be cheap, but I feel like, if I’m paying $25 a year for flickr, I shouldn’t have to pay $25 a year for online editing too.
Especially when there are other options out there, http://www.lunapic.com/editor/, Gimp, http://www.pixlr.com/, Picasa, http://fotoflexer.com/
What I hope, is that this sort of editing gets added for free with the payment required of Flickr/picasa/whatever.
Google should first make picasa.com default website of picasa web albums, not the desktop software. And congrats to the picnic team.
Congrats to Picnic team!
Great… another product I use that Google will destroy.
Guess it’s time to switch to Pixlr.
Smart move by Google and yet another demonstration why they, not Yahoo!, will dominate the online space for years to come.
Hopefully some strong integration into Picasa will improve that product further and may even lure some Flickr users over.
Good, PicasaWeb needs serious work; hopefully the Picnik team will eventually help with that. Either way this a pretty good buy Picnik is seriously awesome.
another kudos to google on this acquisition and hoping they open up some of the payment features. Might actually seriously consider picassa now.
Picnik is fantastic – we integrated it on FrameChannel a while back and it has been superb. Congrats to the Picnik team
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googlepicnic.com?
Any idea what Google paid for picnik?
I love Picnik. Congrats to the team that built the best web based photo editor by far. I wonder if Yahoo or someone else will snatch up Aviary. They do this and a who slew of other online image creation.
I think it would be interesting if Yahoo switched to a tool based on Silverlight. They already have a deal with Microsoft. The upcoming Silverlight 4 (and 3 to certain extend) has a good out-of-browser support and is more performant than related RIA technologies. Yahoo could create a cool photo editing app. I would certainly use it.
Check out EasyPainter bu nookla.com
http://nokola.com/easypainter/ So simple, yet impressive.
This is great news. Things are really getting better and better these days. Picnik’s editing features is simply superb! Not a bad choice at all…
Wow that’s great news. It must be a great day for Jonathan and the whole team at Picnik!