Google Buys Instagram's Rival, Snapseed

Google recently announced the purchase of Germany-based Nik Software for an undisclosed amount.

Nik Software, by the way, is responsible for the creation of the mobile photo-editing application Snapseed. According to the Huffington Post, the award-winning Snapseed (iPad App of the Year 2011) is widely seen as rivals to popular social photography app, Instagram.

Snapseed is a paid application (US$4.99) and has about 9 million users, compared to Instagram which commands more than 100 million global users. According to analysts, Google's motivation for buying Snapseed is to play "chase up in social."

"We want to help our users create photos they absolutely love, and in our experience Nik does this better than anyone," said Vic Gundotra, Google's Senior Vice President (Engineering) on a Google+ post.

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 said on its Website.

Google is now in a fierce (although some may say one-sided) competition with Facebook in the social network front. However, the focus of both companies have now shifted towards the mobile platform where there is a large untapped market, plus photo-related mobile apps are fast gaining in popularity too.

According to Snapseed's website, an Android app is already on the way although there's no confirmation on its actual arrival date. 

Source: Reuters, Via Huffington Post

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