The popular IOS photo sharing app, owned by Nik Software, was launched in the summer of 2011 and won the title of app of the year by Apple.
Despite having a $4.99 price tag, the mobile application is popular among photography enthusiast with 9 million users as of June this year.
"We want to help our users create photos they absolutely love, and in our experience Nik does this better than anyone," said Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president of engineering.
The Snapseed app allows users to share and edit photos as well as add filters like the Instagram app.
"For nearly 17 years, we’ve been guided by our motto, "photography first", as we worked to build world class digital image editing tools," said Nik Software. "We’ve always aspired to share our passion for photography with everyone and with Google’s support we hope to be able to help many millions more people create awesome pictures."
Gundotra also announced that Google+ hit a milestone this week with over 400,000,000 registered users and 100,000,000 monthly active users, after launching public sign-up a year ago.
Google’s acquisition of Snapseed may prove to be stiff competition for Facebook. Nik Software plans to make Snapseed available on Android soon.
Facebook finalised its Instagram deal this month, purchasing the company for $715m. Facebok had officially announced its plan to acquire acquire Instagram back in April. However, the deal was put on hold due to investigations by the Federal Trade Commission and Office of Fair Trading fearing the company could monopolise photo uploads.
In a statement about the Instagram purchase, Mark Zuckerberg said that it was an "important milestone for Facebook" as it was the first acquisition that had a product with a large amount of users.
"We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all," said Zuckerberg. "But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together."
Instagram is one of the fastest growing mobile apps to date. The mobile app has gained over 80 million users in under 2 years. Its founders think it can hit 100 million by the end of 2012.
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