Today Google announced that it is acquiring online photo editing software company Picnik. Picnik's online software lets users edit photos from picture sharing services like Picasa Web Albums, Flickr, Facebook, myspace, photobucket and webshots. Seattle based Picnik announced last month that users edited 1 billion pictures using their online software so far. As the cloud-based Google apps office suite and browser based Chrome operating system continue to gain mainstream adoption, purchase of Picnik gives the search giant a key tool for online photo management.
Google acquired online photo editing software Picasa in 2004, and started offering a free download of the software for Windows, Mac OS and Linux environments. In 2007, the company acquired another image technology firm - Image America, whose technology is now being used in aerial photography of Google maps.
