Who better to help you embrace your inner leprechaun than Picnik? Turn yourself the color of the Emerald Isle itself, surround yourself with whimsical stickers, and festoon yourself with four-leaf clover! Happy Saint Patrick’s Day, and slaínte!

And all this leads us to today’s exciting news: we’ve just been acquired by Google! 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. We want to thank you all for being great users, pushing us to grow and do big things. So thank you all for your continued support, and Happy Picniking!

- Mike, Darrin, Jonathan, Peter, Brian, Justin, Virginia, Steve, Charlie, Brenda, Michael, Ali, Sonia, Sarah, Lisa, Chelsea, Kelcey, Maria, Annie Laurie, Pearl, Michael B and Tim

FAQ

1. What is Picnik?
Picnik is a fast, fun, easy to use and powerful set of photo editing tools for editing, sharing and printing images using any internet browser on any computer platform. Picnik is integrated with a wide variety of websites like Picasa Web Albums, Facebook, Flickr, Yahoo! Mail and Photobucket. With Picnik, you can edit your photos wherever they are from wherever you are.

2. What happens to my Picnik account and settings?
Your Picnik account and settings will stay the same. To view, change or delete your Picnik account and settings, go here.

3. Do I have to log into Google to use Picnik?
No, you don’t need a Google account to use Picnik. Picnik is free to use and registration is not required, although to make Picnik even better, we encourage you to create an account here.

4. Will I still be able to access other social networking and photo storage sites from Picnik, or access Picnik from those social networking and photo storage sites?
Yes!

5. Will Picnik still offer feedback support?
Absolutely!

6. What will happen to Easy Listening Thursday (ELT)?
We plan on sitting back, relaxing, and letting the soothing sounds of ELT guide us into a Thursday evening in our new Google Seattle offices.

7. What happens to Team Picnik?
Team Picnik will continue working on Picnik from Google’s Seattle offices.

It comes from Gísli Hjálmar, an Icelandic law student working as a technician and one of Flickr’s more prolific Picnikers. To celebrate, and to show him off a bit, we asked him a little bit about himself.

He became interested in photography when he was around 19, but then didn’t take pictures for nearly 20 years before starting up again three years ago.

Two years ago he discovered Picnik, and now does most of his photo editing with us (even though he has Photoshop on his computer). His favorite part of Picnik? The Seasonal Effects! How does he feel about his photo being Picnik’s billionth edited photo? He’s “very happy” and for good reason: Gísli now has a lifetime subscription to Picnik Premium!

Of all the thousands of photos being edited Wednesday morning, we’re so happy that the person with the billionth photo is such an interesting guy, an enthusiastic photographer and a good Picniker! It makes us think about all the millions of interesting people out there with their squillions of interesting pictures using Picnik all the time, and we can’t wait to see what the next billion brings. Thank you all and happy Picniking!

To put this into perspective:

One billion seconds: nearly 32 years
One billion minutes ago: Trajan was Emperor of Rome
One billion days ago: Lucy was still alive and well
One billion edits ago: it was October 2007!

To celebrate this HUGE number, Picnik Premium is free for everyone today! So enjoy those Effects, admire all that’s Advanced and go nuts with Seasonal from 9 a.m. today until 9 a.m. tomorrow, February 4th, Seattle time (PST)!

Time’s up! Thank’s so much everyone for helping to make this possible, and many happy Picniking returns!

Also, make sure you catch Picnik CMO and Bullhorn (and mom) Lisa Conquergood on a panel discussion talking about “Moms as Memory Keepers” on Friday at 1:00 pm with Jef Holove of Eye-Fi, Jennifer Smiczek of The Print Shop, Terence Swee of muvee, Neil Yarian of Pandigital, Susan Write of Smilebox and Suzanne Kantra of Techlicious.com moderating.

Number 1 on the zeitgeist is “acai berry”, which of course Oprah was big into this year. Number 6 is “peanut butter recall” and boy, do we we remember getting the call from Costco to pack up our precious Clif Bars. So most of the things on this list had some major media event behind it during 2009, except for “picnic.”

We here at Picnik think this is lovely. It could be that “picnic” rising so suddenly in Google searches signifies a return to simple pleasures, time spent with friends and family together, in a field, on a blanket, buttering sandwiches and picking blackberries. We had one or two picnics ourselves during the past year, in fact. Or maybe they just needed a photo editor! Happy Picniking!

So light up your nose, sling on some antlers and wreathe yourself in holly (or nuts!) for the most festive faces in town. It’s perfect for your Facebook profile, Twitter avatar, LinkedIn headshot or Congressional portrait, so make yourself a Snow Queen, a Reindeer or downright unrecognizable behind all that beard because we here at Team Picnik have put out a whole new section of flattering effects, silly hats and a whole bunch of nuts for our best holiday collection ever.

And for you Americans, we’ve got just the thing for those of us who’ll be having friends and family over for the Thanksgiving holiday with fun projects like Recipe Cards, Place Cards, Holiday Cards and more in our new festive Fancy Collages. And for after Thanksgiving, get started early on your Christmas shopping (or Wish List writing) with Picnik Premium, of course!

If you’re going to be in New York next week, keep your eyes peeled between November 16 and 19th for Picnik CEO Jonathan Sposato and CMO Lisa Conquergood! If you do see them, it’s because they’ll be attending the Web 2.0 Expo in the Big Apple during those days. If you’re an expo-goer as well, you can’t miss Lisa’s session with Avner Ronen of Boxee.tv Thursday on “Marketing via Fan Boys/Fan Girls: Your Customers As Your Brand Evangelists.”

Lisa Conquergood

You’re also invited to knock back a cognac at the Picnik Tweet-up on Wednesday the 18th from 6 – 8 PM at Bar 44 at the Royalton Hotel in Midtown. Want to go? Here’s the twtvite!

If you’re at Lisa’s session, make it to Bar 44, or see any Team Picnikers in NY, let us know what you think on Twitter with hashtag #picnikNYC!

And here’s more information: