Google buys Picasa, CNET buys WebShots

July 16, 2004

What exactly is the big deal all of a sudden with image editing? This week there was action from two companies–Google bought Picasa, and my employer CNET bought Webshots.

Now the Google deal makes sense to me. Picasa has features to make it easy to blog your photos, and of course Google already owns Blogger.com. So it’s a perfect fit–add a bit of technology for photo blogging. Now if they can incorporate some way to let me post a photo from my camera phone directly, it’ll be perfect. You know, let me email the photo directly from my phone to some special address that then automatically posts the photo to my blog.

The CNET deal I’m not so sure about. I guess from a digital lifestyle view it makes sense, much the same way that Apple has both iTunes and iPhoto, the Webshots deal adds a photo site to CNET’s music sites (MP3.com and Music.download.com). And it further moves the company into the consumer market, away from the tech geek core.

The user base for Webshots is apparently quite different from the traditional CNET user so it’s like buying a whole new audience, with very little duplication. That seems promising in terms of cross-promotion (i.e., if you’re shopping for digital cameras at MySimon.com they could promote the photo-editing and photo-printing services at WebShots.com). But it’s not as obvious and direct a benefit as the Google/Picasa deal.

Still, I can see benefits in both deals. I’m gonna have to try out the Picasa software now that it’s free. And hopefully I’ll get Webshots discounts since we own them now. Best of both worlds for me at least.