Saturday, January 21, 2012

Google shutting down picnik

Google just rained all over Picnik's picnic. The photo editing site got the ax on Friday and will shut down in April.

Picnik — which said via its site that its last day will be April 19 — will be moving to Google+ in the future. Google also announced that it is shutting down other services including Needlebase, Social Graph API, Urchin and Google Sky Map.

"As we head into 2012, we've been sticking to some old resolutions — the need to focus on building amazing products that millions of people love to use every day," Google said via its blog. "That means taking a hard look at products that replicate other features, haven't achieved the promise we had hoped for or can't be properly integrated into the overall Google experience."

Google said it will use Picnik staffers to "continue creating photo-editing magic across Google products."

In the post to its site, Picnik cast the move in a positive light.

"Since joining Google in 2010, we have been creating editing magic in Google products while continuing to keep Picnik awesome. But now we get to focus on even awesomer things," the post said.

Picnik also hinted that its photo editing features will be headed to Google+ and other Google products sooner than later.

The news comes just a few days after Flickr cut various features — including Picnik — from its site as part of a re-organization effort. Picnik's tools were integrated not only into Flickr, but also Picasa, Google's photo-sharing platform, as well as Facebook.

To smooth the transition to Google+, Picnik has added a feature called Picnik Takeout that downloads images to the desktop as zip files. Photos can also be copied to Google+, where they can then be stored and shared. Picnik also informed its premium members that they will be refunded as a result of the change. And until the site closes, all members can be granted access to its premium privileges for free.

Will you miss Picnik? What photo-editing services do you use? Let us know in the comments.

No comments:

Post a Comment