March 22, 2005

Flickr bought by Yahoo!

I've been mulling over this news item for the past few day. Today GEWF regular MGA sends along this article.

Internet giant Yahoo has snapped up the small Vancouver start-up that created the popular photo-sharing website Flickr, a deal that means the Vancouver company will move south to Sunnyvale, Calif.

I'm one of the thousands who have been loving Flickr since it appeared a year ago. Now they've sold themselves to Yahoo!. I'm not sure what I think about this.

I'm happy for the Flickr folks, who have created one of the best ever sites on the web. "Striking it rich" has always been one of the unabashed goals of the tech industry. But I'm leery of the great Flickr culture being influenced by big-site Yahoo!.

It could have been worse, they could have been bought by Google, or TiVo. These are two companies that I used to worship, who have tarnished their reputations with some very poor choices in recent times.

Good luck to the Flickr folks. And keep up the good work.

Posted by jackhodgson at March 22, 2005 10:45 AM