Picture this!

So, Google has snapped Snapseed, an Instagram rival. After Facebook bought Instagram, it was natural for Google to scout for a similar company.

Google had already acquired Picnik, but Picnik was only meant for editing photographs on the desktop. Google can now use Snapseed for its Google Plus mobile app.

Interestingly, Snapseed does not have an Android app, and the site says one is on the way “soon”. Snapseed has apps for iPhone and iPad.

It remains to be seen what Google will do with Snapseed - whether it will allow the latter to remain as a standalone app or use it for integrating it with Google Plus.

Google Plus is slowly gaining traction. Vic Gundotra, in the same Google Plus post announcing the Snapspeed acquisition, said: “This week we also hit an important milestone - over 400,000,000 people have upgraded to Google+. It was only a year ago that we opened public sign-up, and we couldn’t have imagined that so many people would join in just 12 months. While Google+ is all about creating a better experience across Google, it’s also a destination. And here too, I’m happy to report that we have just crossed 100,000,000 monthly active users on Google+ (plus.google.com and mobile app).”

Though Google Plus is doing well, it has not been able to match Facebook. One reason could be that Google had not opened up the Google Plus API, But with the API recently opened, things could change. The likely integration of Snapseed to Google Plus and the opening up of the API could just be the tonic for Google Plus.

dinakaran.rengachary@thehindu.co.in

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