Internet search giant Google, Inc. (GOOG) announced Monday that it acquired Instagram rival and Snapseed maker Nik Software in a bid to attract more followers for its social network Google+. Financial terms for the deal were not disclosed by the companies. The deal was revealed in a post on Google+ by Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of Engineering for Google.
"We want to help our users create photos they absolutely love, and in our experience Nik does this better than anyone," Gundotra said on the post.
Gundotra noted that Google+ is currently having more than 100 million monthly active users, with more than 400 million users having themselves upgraded to Google+ after just a year of operations. Google+ was launched last year as a direct rival to Facebook.
Nik Software says Snapseed has more than nine million users, while Instagram says it has more than 100 million.
Established in 1995, San Diego, California-based Nik Software is the recognized leader in digital photographic products and technologies, including its patented U Point technology. Its first ever mobile app, Snapseed, is a photo application that enables anyone to create amazing photos with a wide variety of innovative filters and tools. It helps you to easily enhance your photos, add amazing effects, and share them everywhere.
Snapseed Mobile app was launched for the Apple iPad in June 2011, quickly followed for the Apple iPhone in August 2011. In January 2012, the software moved onto the Mac OS and shortly after, in February, it was available on Windows.
Though Snapseed is less popular and smaller than Instagram, Google has acquired to add the photo editing and sharing software to its armory.
Menlo Park, California-based social network Facebook, Inc. (FB) agreed in April to acquire photo-sharing service provider Instagram, Inc. in a $1 billion cash and stock deal, which was last month cleared by the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Competition. The deal is the largest ever for Facebook.
Instagram is a free photo sharing application that allows Smartphone users to take a photo, apply a digital filter, then share it on a variety of social networking services. Instagram now has more than 30 million registered users.
The regulator is said to have launched a competition probe that appeared to be routine, and was reportedly in contact with at least two of Facebook's largest competitors, Google and Twitter.
GOOG closed Monday's regular trading session at $709.98, up $0.30 or 0.04% on a volume of 1.51 million shares.
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