Flickr was acquired by Yahoo in 2005 for $35 million but the former’s fate has been up in the air following Yahoo’s acquisition by Verizon in 2017 for $4.5 billion. It was combined with AOL in Oath and since then it has been unclear what Verizon was planning to do with Flickr. It turns out, not much. Flickr has been sold to professional photo hosting service SmugMug. USA Today reports that SmugMug has purchased Flickr for an undisclosed price.
“Flickr has survived through thick-and-thin and is core to the entire fabric of the Internet,” SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill told the scribe. “We’re thrilled for these two brands to come together to grow their photo sharing communities and continue to innovate for their members,” Oath said in a statement provided to USA Today.
Be that as it may, Yahoo wasn’t really able to capture the interest of the average user for Flickr and for the longest time it remained a favorite of those who were really interested in photography. The average user stuck to their Instagrams and Snapchats despite multiple redesigns and feature additions to Flickr by Yahoo.
MacAskill has promised the Flickr community that their beloved service won’t be going away and that Flickr will be maintained as a standalone community that’s separate from SmugMug.