Now this caught me by surprise: Google has apparently acquired Nik Software, a photo preset tool that is a giant in the industry. What does this mean for Google's goals? Who is to say. What we can say is that Nik likely got a fantastic deal out of the process.
Nik posted the following:
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 Nik Software Team
Here is a screenshot from Nik's blog:
We'll get back to you as soon as we know more information on the price and the ramifications of the acquisition.
I hope we get free Nik software!
More likely that anything you edit with NIK software will suddenly appear in the google search engine, or contain content-related ads, or somehow have image use privileges assigned to GOOG without compensation to you because you used "free" software from GOOG.
Hope they release Color Efex Pro free!!!!
Good strategic move for GOOG, but disappointing news for Apple ecosystem photographers. I was hoping Apple would buy Nik and make some long-overdue real enhancements to Aperture. I would not be surprised if Google began starving Apple support while consumer-izing Nik technology to let Android compete with the image support of the market-leading iPhone/instragram model. Probably drove up value of OnOne Software (the company, not the product), which is privately held; Apple might be driven to buy OnOne as a defensive move.
Sound logical, but non-Apple-mentality. Apple doesn't seem like a company who would go out and buy other products to use/kill. If they wanted something like that, they'd made it themselves.
@Tam:disqus - You might want to look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Apple
and reconsider your post.
Apple has a long history of buying software and hardware producers.
You do know that Apple bought Siri, and then limited which phones it ran on, right?
Yessuh.
Apple is notorious for acquiring outside patents and either assimilating them into the ecosystem as their own innovation (limiting competitor use), killing them off completely or at worst... simply picking them up as a legal measure to shore up lawsuits toward competitors that use similar tech.
GOOG also gets Snapseed, so it looks like the real business move is the GOOG is positioning itself against Facebook.
snapseed is made by nik software
Yes, that's my point--the acquisition of Nik gives GOOG a product that competes with Instagram, shoring them up against Facebook.
Breaking indeed, I don't see much good coming from this :(
content repositioned in thread to show as response to Tam Nguyen above
Sorry, I should've clarified that Apple does go out and acquire other companies, but most of the acquired products don't end up seeing the light of day compared to Google.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Google
Don't like competition???...Buy them out and bury the body. :(
This makes me sad. :(
I happen to like Nik... a lot. Hope they don't screw it up too much.
Snapseed as part of the G+ App could be one thing.
But it's much about G+ and all the photographers who love it I guess. I could also imagine something like a good Lightroom export plugin for G+/Picasa or some Chrome Webapps.
Im hoping they are planning to turn Picasa into some sort of lightroom alternative
This is most likely a catch up to Facebooks aquisition of Instagram. Hopefully they let the minds of Nik do their work, and just piggy back on their software coding.
So much for any hope of Silver Efex Pro 3
google also baught Sletchup - and so far no ads. They made it better and made it free. But I see this as google's Instagram
snapseed on android :)
You do realise that google only bought Nik due to the popularity of their snapseed app... and they don't really give a crap about the rest of their software.
Facebook -> Instragram
Google+ -> Snapseed (Niksoftware)
Thats the whole strategy..
Nothing for free. Apple is good but no angel :)
Google might turn Snapseed into Instagram type of thingy. Who knows.