I have always been a big fan of Picnik, the online image editor which I have mentioned several times in the past. Picnik provide users with a easy to use and simple interface to edit images online.

In an official announcement on the Picnik Blog, the folks at Picnik said that Google has officially acquired Picnik.

And all this leads us to today’s exciting news: we’ve just been acquired by Google! What does this mean for Picnik? It means we can think BIG. Google processes petabytes of data every day, and with their worldwide infrastructure and world-class team, it is truly the best home we could have found. Under the Google roof we’ll reach more people than ever before, impacting more lives and making more photos more awesome.

But why would Google acquire a online image editing company? Well, from what I could think of, Google’s Picasa Web does not have any image editing capabilities, so Picnik could be put to good use at Picasa Web. Another use for Picnik would be in Gmail and Google Buzz, where Google allows users to upload and share images but does not allow them to edit it.

Picnik definitely proves a good fit for lot of Google properties and it will be interesting to see how Google makes use of the latest acquisition. However, current Picnik users do not have much to worry about as they will be able to continue using Picnik as before.

There is no official note on the price of the sale, but we will try to update the post once we get information about it.

Google welcomes Picnik [via TechMeme]