Google has today acquired Nik Software, makers of the popular photo-editing app for iOS and OS X, Snapseed. In a blog post the Nik Software team said:
We are pleased to announce that Google has acquired Nik Software. For nearly 17 years, we’ve been guided by our motto, “photography first”, as we worked to build world class digital image editing tools. We’ve always aspired to share our passion for photography with everyone, and with Google’s support we hope to be able to help many millions more people create awesome pictures.We’re incredibly grateful for all of your support and hope you’ll join us on the next phase of our journey as part of Google.All our best!
The team behind Snapseed will relocate to Google"s headquarters in Mountain View to work on Google+, according to sources speaking to The Verge.
While Snapseed offers much deeper editing than Instagram, it isn"t close to as popular. It"s likely that the team will bake Snapseed features into Google+ and its apps rather than continuing development of the standalone app, much like what is happening with the Sparrow mail team who moved to Google in July.
This move is likely to compete with Instagram and Facebook. Facebook did not kill Instagram and I for one hope that Google doesn"t kill Snapseed either. I"ve found it to be an excellent for editing on the move and it would be a shame for its features to move exclusively to Google+.
Sources: Nik Software, The Verge