Google Takes On Facebook With The Acquisition Of Nik Software

Sites include Facebook.com , Google.com , niksoftware.com . Published on October 1st, 2012. Written by Anthony West.

Photo sharing and social media are like peas in a pod and so, many people weren’t surprised when Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion. The only thing that was surprising was the purchase price.

That said, Google is not intent on letting Facebook establish too much of a foothold among social media users who like to share photos and the search engine giant has made a play of its own. Fresh off the announcement that Google+ has hit 400 million registered users, Google is announcing the acquisition of Nik Software, a German based company that owns the popular photo sharing app called Snapseed.

Although the sum of the deal hasn’t been disclosed, The Wall Street Journal has speculated that Snapseed’s 9 million users all pay $4.99 for use, and so the purchase price may very well be a multiple of that total value.

Whatever the case, Nik Software will be Google’s answer to the Instagram acquisition by Facebook and already there are plans to integrate Snapseed with Google+. Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president of engineering (and head of Google+) couldn’t contain his excitement: “Today I’m excited to welcome Nik Software to the Google family! We want to help our users create photos they absolutely love, and in our experience Nik does this better than anyone.”

Things are certainly heating up between Google and Facebook. The latter has declared war on Google search and Google and fighting back with improvements to Google+.