Before this purchase Google+ was not without photo editing tools. They have had editing since October 2011. Google included their own editing tools and were improving these since their introduction. They even added a meme creation wizard in January. Within the app there was an auto-upload system that enabled users to upload their pictures or videos directly to the gallery on their Google+ account. The official response from Nik Software is “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.”

It looks like Nik Software is certainly looking forward to their collaboration with Google and we will see how this pair will do against Facestagram. Meanwhile Samsung has also announced their new Galaxy Camera software which is intended for instant picture sharing. It looks like this three way battle is emerging on all fields, from smartphones to apps for them. “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.” Nik Software believes that they made a right move, time will tell.

[Ed – We were actually a little surprised that the Facebook/Instagram deal went through. After all Facebook already had their own photo sharing software in the works and there was some evidence to suggest that Facebook only bought Instagram to keep anyone else from buying them. There are many theories as to why Facebook got away with this and they range all over the place including information sharing with the US Government by Facebook. It is more likely that Facebook recent stock price plunge makes them less likely to be able to abuse any type of market position in the eyes of the people that reviewed the deal. Google is still very much behind Facebook when it comes to social networking and we doubt that a new photo editing/ filter app will change that much.]

Discuss this in our Forum