As Google spreads its influence through the internet, some of us are losing our favorite service sites.  Over time, Google has acquired sites that help you do all sorts of interesting things. Picnik is a photo-editor and Sky Map lets you map the stars as they’re seen from anywhere on Earth.  Summify sends users a daily digest of all the news from the users social network feeds and Urchin analyzes web site traffic. That’s a pretty wide variety and yet Google has decided that everything that these services offer is already included or can be nicely integrated into things that Google already provides on Google+, Google Maps, etc.

Fortunately for us, Google is going out of its way to make the transition easy. For example, Picnik now has a tool called Picnik Takeout, which allows you to quickly download all of the pictures you have saved on the site or copy them all straight into your Google+ account. Picnik seems positive about the change, saying that their tools will continue to be integrated into Google tools like Picasa and that the Picnik team will still be working to create more great editing tools, just not for their own site.

So, at least for Picnik, this is a win-win situation. Company employers get to continue their work and Google doesn’t have to invest in a separate company.  But what does this mean for consumers?  There are definitely advantages to having all of our favorite sets of tools integrated into one giant system. It means that everything should automatically compatible, for starters. Interfaces will probably all be similar making it easy to learn to use new tools and programs. On the other hand, do we really want everything we use to be in the hands of just one company?

Ignoring the technical side of it (which I don’t really know much about anyway), I’m torn. Weigh in and let me know where you stand on the issue!