For the site’s brief history, Picnik was bought by Google in March 2011, hinting that the search engine giant would collaborate the website’s team sooner or later to improve the online photo editing experience on the Internet. Google Product Management Director Brian Axe, even wrote in a company blog, “We’re excited to welcome them to Google.”
Picnik users even got a mail from the website’s team, noting that the powerful creation would be boosting its merits to improve user interface on Google+, with a number of photo editing tools. The team wrote, “We are excited by the photo-editing fun we have already brought to Google products, like Google+, where you can find many of your favorite Picnik effects in Creative Kit.”
For those, who have stored their photos on Picnik, have an option of moving them on their PCs and laptops, using a new feature called Takeout. There is an easy way too, that is to copy them to Google+.
Interestingly, for those who have used the Creative Kit on Google+, would have noticed that a number of feature of Picnik are already present in the Creative Kit. For the experience, Picnik site is much more usable as compared to the Creative Kit. One of the reasons is that minimalist interface and graphic mediocrity is found throughout Google+. So the addition of Picnik, as a whole, in Google+ would only help the user experience.
Talking about Picnik, the site offered services in two flavors, one is a paid service, while the other is a premium one. The team noted that each and every premium member would be receiving a full refund of their annual fee of $24.95. It wrote, “Even if you are on your very last day of an annual membership, we will refund you the entire $24.95,” continuing its point, it added, “Just because we want to say thanks.”
Picnik is a great product, but merging the same with Google+ could have ill-effects, as users have been loving the site, and to use its services, might not want to shift over to Google+.
Moving on, other services, who will see the axe, are Google Message Continuity, Google Sky Map, Needlebase, Social Graph API, and Urchin. Dave Girouard, Google’s vice president of product management,wrote Friday on the company’s official blog, “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.” He added, “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 might want users to revolve all round Google+, focusing mainly on the social network.