
Google shutting down Picnik - there
http://blog.picnik.com/2012/01/official-announcement-picnik-is-closing/
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toddmorey
Wow, if you look at the blog, it's immediately obvious that Picnik was really
loved by a devoted fan base. I'm not endorsing the Picnik shutdown decision (I
think it sucks), but you have to ask yourself, "If my service closed today,
would there be this level of outcry?" If so, you're doing something really
special.

Aviary recently pivoted to become an embedded photo editing service for web +
phone apps. I wonder if this is an opportunity for them.

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primigenus
Not only do they have a devoted fan base, but nearly all of the comments are
by women. There's got to be some interesting data there in how they ended up
attracting that audience.

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timmaah
My wife uses it. She uses it because there is a button for it in picasa.
Mainly to tweak photos for her blog and add text into them.

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stilist
A week ago Flickr announced that they’d be moving away from Picnik:
[http://blog.flickr.net/en/2012/01/13/start-the-new-year-
fres...](http://blog.flickr.net/en/2012/01/13/start-the-new-year-fresh/)

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HardyLeung
Wow! Amazing! So what's the _real_ alternative to online image editing for the
mass? Of course there are Pixlr, Sumopaint, Aviary, Photoshop Express, but
each targets a somewhat different audience than Picnik. I know the fact that
Picnik is Flash-based is inconsistent with Google's strategy, and that with
Flash going nowhere, Picnik is unlikely to help Google anywhere. But still...
there are tons of moms and pops who use Picnik.

Question: Is there room for a new Picnik?

Edit: hmm, the Google+ version of Picnik (scaled down) is still Flash-based.
So this is most likely part of the "Drive Traffic to Google+ At All Cost!"
strategy.

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tlianza
Analytics still uses flash, as well as most of their charting tools. I believe
the attachment uploader in gmail... they've also baked flash into chrome (
[http://blog.chromium.org/2010/03/bringing-improved-
support-f...](http://blog.chromium.org/2010/03/bringing-improved-support-for-
adobe.html) ). Unlike iOS and Windows8 Metro apps, Android supports flash.

If anti-flash is the strategy for them, I'd question the execution.

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lachlanj
Looks like Google is becoming the new Yahoo. The place where great startups go
to die.....

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bane
It would be _fabulous_ if I had this problem.

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binarycrusader
Key thing to note is that Picnik functionality is moving to Google+.

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itsbf
The problem with Google+ is any large photo gets re-sized to 2048 x 2048. I
did research and tested it. I haven't tried them, but some alternatives being
mentioned are fotoflexer.com and advanced.aviary.com.

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jordanlev
Bummer -- this was a great service. Seems like Google has been shutting down a
lot of things recently. There was a passage in the Steve Jobs biography where
he was telling Larry Page that google should focus on fewer products and not
spread themselves so thin -- seems like since Larry took over from Eric
Schmidt, that's what he's been doing (slowly but surely).

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there
i can't help but think that this was done by google to hurt flickr/yahoo,
since flickr integrated picnik as their web-based photo editing tool. i used
it quite a bit to do easy changes like cropping photos.

maybe yahoo should have bought them before google did.

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SyneRyder
Don't forget Facebook. A lot of users would've used Picnik to edit and share
their photos on Facebook. If it's all about Google+, then hurting FB is a
bonus.

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tannerc
Sad day. Picnik wasn't the best photo editing tool, but it was certainly handy
to use away from home when you need to edit something quickly and painlessly.

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JohnTitus
Too bad. It was very helpful for editing pics in Flickr.

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lukevdp
Oh man that's annoying. I loved Picnik, and recommended it to all my clients
as great way for resizing photos.

Does anyone know an alternative?

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HardyLeung
For this particular simple task, I recommend Pixlr. It was no where as
polished as Picnik, but it is fast to load.

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OoTheNigerian
Of all Google's shutdowns, this was the only one that make me scream out loud.
I am gutted.

Picnik was a minimum viable photoshop. The resizing options were so useful and
it was really simple.

This is just sad.

I am speaking as a selfish user though.

Are there other good options out there?

