Yahoo Photos closes, Microsoft to buy Yahoo

Yahoo encourages users to switch to Flickr, Microsoft up for buying Yahoo

4 May 2007 15:36 GMT / By Ryan Haynes

Thousands of photo sharing users will have to move their photos from Yahoo's Photo service because the company has said that it is closing its doors.

"The strains of running two photo sharing sites has always seemed impractical", one industry insider told us.

Yahoo is moving on and closing down Yahoo Photos encouraging users to move to its Flickr photo service instead from June.

It's though that Yahoo are trying to push Flickr up the rankings, since competiting website, PhotoBucket's extraordinary growth from a quarter of the market to around 40%.

At the same time Yahoo's shares rise 14.6% with two independent rumours that Microsoft has stepped up a gear to buy Yahoo. The two have discussed options over the years but only now with Google's massive growth is a deal expected to happen.

Yahoo is reportedly worth approximately $50 billion. "It's been talked about for a long time, ever since Google came into the picture. I can't imagine a more perfect deal", said Peter Lobravico, vice president of risk arbitrage sales/trading at brokerage Wall Street Access. "You can't find a stronger buyer than Microsoft and while it would spur a lot of political and regulatory noise, everyone knows in the end that the deal would go through."