Confirmed Yesterday: Yahoo! Bought Flickr

my feelings on hearing the news...
Uploaded by evilcoffee.

Yesterday afternoon Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake posted that the rumours of Yahoo buying Flickr are indeed true. The forums erupted, naturally, especially FlickrCentral:

Yahoo! actually does acquire Flickr
announcement in FlickrBlog

It's taken ages to get through all the comments, but along with the expected extremes of "Yahoo? I'm leaving!" and "Yahoo? Congratulations!" there's been a great deal of impassioned pleading for the Flickrization of Yahoo! and not the other way around. I've posted my own opinions there, based on my dreadful experience with Yahoo albums. I also still have a Geocities page, which I don't bother with anymore because I hate Yahoo!'s popup ads.

But, I'll be optimistic that Flickr hasn't sold out on their creative direction, UI, or starts looking too... Yahoo!ish. Aesthetically, Yahoo! is nowhere near Flickr -- it assumes all internet users have ADD. There are things constantly competing for your eye, and the clutter is a big turnoff. Take Yahoo! IM, for example -- it's too cutesy for words, so I hate using it. I'll have to keep reminding myself that the Ludicorp team are the poster people for responsiveness, simplicity, and interface elegance, and I would like to think that no amount of money in the world would be enough to put their names behind a schlocked-down version of Flickr.

UPDATE WED, MAR 23: Thanks to evilcoffee for letting me use his logo. Click on it for more info.