Flickr beta logo Caterina Fake has confirmed in the Flickr Blog that Yahoo has acquired Flickr -- the exceptional online photo sharing and management service -- along with parent company Ludicorp.


Yahoo actually does acquire Flickr
Holy smokes, SOMEBODY out there is bad at keeping secrets!!  Yes! We can finally confirm that Yahoo has made a definitive agreement to acquire Flickr and us, Ludicorp.

It was only a matter time until one of the online giants took notice of the phenomenal Flickr and snapped it up, especially after Google's acquisition of Picasa last year.

There were two thoughts that immediately came to mind upon reading about the deal:

1. The acquisition should help Flickr with some of the challenges that have affected it from time to time such as lack of availability, upload failures, extremely slow response times, processing problems, database difficulties, load balancing issues and other server-related problems that typically occur during massive spikes in traffic -- especially when the servers get slammed during periods of already heavy traffic. Yahoo's huge financial and technical resources should help Flickr with its high growth-rate, bandwidth intensive, storage-devouring applications.

2. I wonder what will change at Flickr as a result of the acquisition in terms of staff, the way they do things and the impact on the service?

Some excerpts from the Flickr blog worth noting [italic text indicates emphasis added]:

We're going to grow and change, but we're in it for the long haul, with the same management and same team.
...
keeping us around ... is crucial for preserving the Flickrness that is Flickr. They're not going to replace any of us with suits
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Are you going to become Yahoo Photos?
No. Yahoo Photos will get a lot of Flickr features, and there are alot of other areas around Yahoo that will also be Flickrized where Flickrization would be good. Yahoo Photos and Flickr ... will remain separate for the foreseeable future.
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In the future, you'll be able to log into Flickr using your Yahoo account, but you can continue logging on as before.
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Pro account holders will get super mega bonuses, to be announced soon.
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Free accounts will have more storage and uploads --  pro accounts too -- AND they'll be cheaper.


That the current management and development team -- which will presumably expand with funding from its new owner -- will remain in place is definitely good news.

From a consumer perspective, the increased bandwidth and storage limits as well as reduced prices is a magic formula. Getting more for less is always a welcome development.

That Yahoo Photos and Flickr "will remain separate for the forseeable future" is logical. Integrating companies and their products or services is a challenge for any organization. The question is, how far into the future does the "forseeable future" extend? I will be surprised if Flickr still operates as an independent service three years from now.

When I began playing around with Flickr last spring, there was definitely something different about it even though it was still a beta service and had some problems. It seemed like the people building Flickr got it -- they understood how to make an application for the end-user, much as Google did when it changed the search landscape.

On a personal note, Flickr is in no small part responsible for renewing my ages-old interest in photography. When a service that is still in beta can have that kind of effect, you know it's going places.

[Editor's note: My original post -- along with its reflections and analysis -- was eaten by Blogware and was vastly superior to this one in every respect. It's particularly disappointing because it only seems to happen to me when I write a large-ish entry in this too-small editing window].