Yahoo Buys Flickr
It looks like Yahoo has taken another step in arming themselves to compete with Google. It is now official that Yahoo has bought the online sharing service, Flickr. Along with their recent beta launch of Yahoo 360, a new blogging tool, their instant messaging, Internet radio and of course the search engine/portal, Yahoo may be sufficiently equipped to do battle. (Google has Picasa, Blogger, and the most popular search engine, and Gmail) But what exactly will Yahoo do to make them outshine Google?
Vancouver, British Columbia-based Flickr lets users upload digital photos from computers and camera phones, put together photo albums, and post photos to blogs, among other things.
Joanna Stevens, a spokeswoman for Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo, confirmed the deal Sunday but did not disclose the terms.
“We look forward to working with them for their innovation and product development across the Yahoo Network in the coming months,” she said.
Stevens said Flickr will remain a standalone site for now. The company’s employees, however, will relocate to Sunnyvale later this year.
Yahoo and Google have many other services that they provide but the ones listed seem to be the big “Money Makers” right now. I think that the search engine is the main component for both companies and Google has control in that arena. Next would probably be email and instant messaging. Yahoo has the upper hand here, for the time being. Once Gmail goes public who knows what will happen, but Google doesn’t do IM. For online photo sharing, Yahoo has it, but Google’s Picasa software is pretty powerful. Over all I think that they are fairly matched and Google may have the people behind them for now. Yahoo has done a great job of positioning themselves and SHOULD be able to tip the scale to their favor. I will be keeping a close eye on this one.