Google Buying Spree Prompts Shuttering of Seattle-based Acquisitions

Googles recent $500 million dollar buying spree of 27 different companies may have indirectly led to the shuttering of Seattle-based Picnik, the popular photo-editing website that they acquired back in 2010. Google CEO Larry Page is taking his more wood behind fewer arrows strategy into the new year, cutting Picnik completely and dispersing the team across other Google projects, while open-sourcing other products like Google Sky Maps. Clearly Google has made huge capital investments recently in order to increase the breadth of its product base. Sadly for some, this makes it less and less likely that other vanity products similar to picnic, which was popular but struggled to generate revenue up to Googles increasingly stringent standards, will have a place at the Mountain View, Calif., internet giant for much longer. It looks like some of Picnik’s features will be folded into Google+, leaving users of Facebook and other social networking sites out in the cold. Come April 19^th Picnik users will have to go elsewhere for their online photo-editing needs.