Google buys Picnik
As we've reported previously, Google has a long history of acquisitions that seem to gather pace every year - and this year looks set to be no different. Today, the web giant has announced the purchase of the award winning online photo editing service, Picnik.
This acquisition bears the hallmark of Google gearing up to take on Adobe in the high end photo editing war and the 20 staff from Picnik are to be based in the Google Picasa department having spent 5 years building Picnik into a much respected web service.
Interestingly, Google gave an indication that its purchase of companies in 2010 will follow a trend of buying a small company each month and making one large purchase during the year. Analysts will no doubt begin to speculate on what the large 2010 acquisition will be.
Picnik - the perfect lunch?
With its Premium services offering a wealth of photo editing above the free service, Picnik will immediately reap the benefit of the Google PR machine. Its user base is guaranteed to leap and with monthly costs being low to users it is sure to build an even stronger fan base than it already has.
The free service clearly attracts most users and analysts don't seem to have picked up on the new channel of advertising it offers. Picnik's free services show advertisements to users and you can sure Google will be swift to exploit this with carefully targeted advertisements that'll strengthen it's already stratospheric advertising income.
What next?
With eight acquisitions in less months, Google shows no sign of stemming its growth. Picnik is a very respected company and a little gem of a purchase. It suits Google to the core and allows it to further its aim of taking on the likes of Adobe with web based photo editing clearly on its agenda.
We're still of the opinion that Google would love nothing more than to get its hands on Twitter. Buzz isn't all the buzz they want it to be and Twitter comes with a mammoth reputation and capacity for development in revenue. Whether they can wrestle it from the hands of its investors is another thing altogether.
