Google has acquired Picnik, the Seattle-based photo-editing app that lives in the cloud. I always sort of thought of Picnik as Photoshop Elements that I could access from anywhere.

I’m a bit surprised by this news, as I feel like I’ve seen Picnik everywhere in the last year, including BlogHer and CES. In fact, one of those recyclable shopping bags with a big Picnik logo is sitting right next to me.

My first thought when I heard Picnik was acquired by Google was, “What about Yahoo?”  Picnik is integrated into Yahoo’s Flickr photo-sharing app, where it offers online photo editing inside the Flickr wrapper. I use it all the time, actually. So this is interesting cross-contamination between Google and Yahoo. Obviously Google is hoping to really ramp up Picasa, and as Picasa shares so seamlessly with the other Google tools, this makes sense. If everyone I know (and several years worth of photos) wasn’t already on Flickr, I’d probably move to Picasa.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the Picnik blog post on the matter sounds more happy than sad.

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.

What does this mean for you Picnikers? Nothing is changing right away, but Picnik now has more potential than ever before. The team that built Picnik from the grass up will continue making advanced and powerful photo-editing easier, more intuitive and more fun, so stay tuned to hear about all the cool new stuff we’re working on.

The Official Google blog also reiterates that nothing is changing. In particular, they address the Yahoo/Flickr question without mentioning it by name, saying that they’ll support “all existing Picnik partners.”

We’re not announcing any significant changes to Picnik today, though we’ll be working hard on integration and new features. As well, we’d like to continue supporting all existing Picnik partners so that users will continue to be able to add their photos from other photo sharing sites, make edits in the cloud and then save and share to all relevant networks.

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Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

In case you didn’t know, eBay purchased Skype in 2005. Even at the time, a lot of people were sort of scratching their heads, but eBay apparently saw synergy where others did not.

Turns out, eBay ended up scratching their heads as well, and today the deal was announced. Skype has been sold to a group of private investors in a deal valued at $2.75 billion.

The buyer, who will control an approximately 65 percent stake, is an investor group led by Silver Lake and includes Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) Investment Board. eBay is expected to receive approximately $1.9 billion in cash upon the completion of the sale and a note from the buyer in the principal amount of $125 million. The company will retain an approximately 35 percent equity investment in Skype. The transaction, which is not subject to a financing condition, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2009.

It’s worth mentioning that eBay has lost a fair amount of money here – from the initial purchase valued at $4 billion to the money invested in Skype along the way. It looks like eBay is now adhering to the maxim of “do one thing and do one thing well,” as it is now left with the core online auction company and the complementary PayPal.

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Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

Disney is acquiring Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion in stock and cash.

Why? Well, princesses can only grab so much of the kid demographic. Something has to interest the little boys as well, and I guarantee it’s not Wendy Wu, Homecoming Warrior.

The deal still faces shareholder and regulatory approval, but has been approved by the boards of the both companies. Current Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter will be retained to oversee the Marvel properties. According to paidContent,

It’s one of the largest acquisitions in Disney history and has the potential to transform the company. But it will take years in some cases before Disney can do more than reap the licensing fees from some key Marvel characters through its own movies, games and even theme parks. In an interview soon after the announcement, Disney CFO Tom Staggs told paidContent that the licensing “actually underscores the value of these properties.”

As part of the deal, Disney will acquire ownership of Marvel including over 5,000 Marvel characters, including Iron Man, SpiderMan, Hulk, the X-Men, and more.

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Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

So everyone is all abuzz with the recent announcement that Facebook has acquired FriendFeed. According to the folks at FriendFeed,

The FriendFeed team is extremely excited to become a part of the talented Facebook team. We’ve always been great admirers of Facebook, and our companies share a common vision. Now we have the opportunity to bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world and to work alongside Facebook’s passionate engineers to create even more ways for you to easily share with your friends online.

What does this mean? Well, it means Facebook gets an excellent development team from Friendfeed and access to the technology. After all, Facebook has been incorporating FriendFeed-type functionality already this year, with the addition of the real-time streaming news feed. The folks at FriendFeed have made it clear that, for now, nothing is changing with either the API or individual FriendFeed accounts, but that it’s time to look towards the future.

As for Facebook, they issued a press release that states

“As we spent time with Mark and his leadership team, we were impressed by the open, creative culture they’ve built and their desire to have us contribute to it,” said Paul Buchheit, another FriendFeed co-founder. Buchheit, the Google engineer behind Gmail and the originator of Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto, added, “It was immediately obvious to us how passionate Facebook’s engineers are about creating simple, ground-breaking ways for people to share, and we are extremely excited to join such a like-minded group.”

Taylor and Buchheit founded FriendFeed along with Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh in October 2007 after all four played key roles at Google for products like Gmail and Google Maps. At FriendFeed, they’ve brought together a world-class team of engineers and designers.

“Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use.”

Sometimes I wonder about acquisitions and wonder if companies are buying for the sake of buying. This is one partnership that works in my mind and that will, hopefully, benefit all of us who use Facebook.

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Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.