Google’s Picnik Deal Prepares for a Future in the Cloud

March 4th, 2010

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.”

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