Google acquired Nik for their mobile photo app Snapped in 2012 [1] They got the Nik software along with it. At the time each of the tools were sold separately

Google acquired Nik for their mobile photo app Snapped in 2012 [1] They got the Nik software along with it. At the time each of the tools were sold separately for $100-some (don't exactly remember). Eventually google combined them and priced them together as one package. Today they decided to give it away for free. As someone else mentioned, it's unclear if it means google will stop developing it or if they opened it up to get more users and use it as a research tool to gather more data on type of filters users use and how they use them. So eventually to apply that to some type of automated filtering solution for android and/or Google photos. [1] http://mashable.com/2012/09/17/google-acquires-snapseed/ http://mashable.com/2012/09/17/google-acquires-snapseed/