Googles has a Picnik

The technology press has been all over the news of the latest Google acquisition: Google has purchased the most excellent photo editing site Picnik. Since the announcement on the first, there has been article after article announcing, discussing and attempting to bring understanding of the event. The question, why did Google do it? I guess one answer could be, they've got the money to do it and so why not. But seriously, Picnik is a fun site, I've used a number of times, it is simple to use and you can do so much, even with the free account. It has been pointed out in the article by PCMagazine, it is one of the first sites to bring photo editing to the cloud. As we know, the cloud is important to Google, they want to make cloud computing as the next step with the computing experience. The thought is that no longer will you need to store anything on your computer's hard drive, you can put it all on the servers which are owned by Google, or some other service.

The purchase, according to Brian Axe, one of the product managers was:

"We're looking forward to collaborating closely with [Picnik] to improve the online photo editing experience on the web," Axe concluded. "In the meantime, we encourage you to head to Picnik, import some of your photos from Picasa Web Albums, Flickr or Facebook and try your hand at photo editing in the cloud."

According to the blog posted on the Picnik site:

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 stay 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!

They are quite pumped about the whole thing, the 20 staff members will remain working on this project from their office in Seattle. They will now be employees of Google, I suspect with stock options. The purchase price has not been announced. It can be safe to assume it was a boat load of money.

As I said, I've used Picnik for my own photo editing, both prints I have uploaded and also since it is the editor of choice of my other favourite site Pikchur. When I go to edit a photograph, I click the button and Picnik launches. I hope that doesn't change, while Google wants integration with Picasa, I'm not quite a fan of Picasa. I'ved used it, and I know anything I post to this account goes to Picasa. I've got too many other places to post photographs I suppose.

I hope Google stays true and doesn't change anything with Picnik. Keep it as it is, this is why it was purchased, it doesn't need much in the way of change.

What do I want to say? To the people of Picnik good on you. You know have a lot of money in which to further refine develop and make your site the place to go for photo editing. I hope you had a real fun Monday after the announcement was made, you deserve a very nice dinner for all the hard work you've put into the site.