Flickr has been purchased by the SmugMug professional photo hosting service for an undisclosed price, according to a report from USA Today . The fate of Flickr has been in the air as part of Yahoo's continued decline, that Verizon bought $ 4.5 billion last year and merged with AOL in Oath.
Yahoo itself had purchased Flickr in 2005 for $ 35 million, but never seemed to know what to do with the service until the end, even when it tried several redesigns and new services to reactivate Flickr, it never succeeded in editing. a comeback against more modern alternatives like Instagram. "Flickr has survived to the limit and is essential to the entire fabric of the Internet," said SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill, USA Today .
SmugMug is not eliminating that legacy; The company intends to keep Flickr as an independent community and give it more resources and attention than Oath did. But at a technological level, this acquisition could be a difficult task for SmugMug, which is not as big as the photography service it now has.