14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo prepares to announce the closure of Yahoo Photos, the service that allowed users to upload and share their pictures with other Internet users. The service will be shut down in the upcoming months because the company wants to move all the clients to the recently acquired platform, Flick. According to TechCrunch, the migration will be enhanced by a new Yahoo function that will allow users to transfer all their photos to Flick with a single click. It seems that other services will be also supported so, if you want to move your pictures to Photobucket, Snapfish, Shutterfly or Kodak Gallery, you can do it with ease. Flickr was bought in March 2005 and was updated several times, the search giant aiming to promote the service and make it the default photo service of the company.
Stewart Butterfield, Flickr co-founder, sustained the company doesn't want to force users to join their photo service because they are looking to "own" happy users. The current Yahoo Photos customers will be also able to download large versions of their photos or even order CDs and printed pictures, receiving a discount offered by the company.
According to TechCrunch, Yahoo Photos is the largest photo sharing solution on the Internet, having no more than 2 billion saved pictures. Flickr topped the Yahoo service in traffic, but the recently acquired service owns only 500 million images. It seems like Flickr is growing very fast and managed to attract 28.5 million visitors while Yahoo Photos lured 31.1 million. However, the giant portal Yahoo is currently the owner of both services so the company is not challenged by any of its rivals.