After being spurned back in early 2008, Microsoft is supposedly on the hunt to acquire Yahoo once again. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft is working on putting a bid together with Silver Lake Partners, the company that Microsoft recently purchased Skype from. If the buyout succeeds this time, Microsoft will also become the owner of Flickr, which Yahoo purchased six years ago.

In other news, Google recently revealed that 3.4 billion photos have been uploaded to Google+ in the past 100 days. Seems like the service is becoming a popular option for photo sharing.

(via WSJ via Mashable)

Matthew Rothenberg, the man who has led Flickr the past two years has Head of Product, announced today that he is leaving the service. In a message posted to his Twitter account, Rothenberg states,

Here goes: after 5 years, I will be stepping away from Flickr. Will miss working with such a talented, hard-working, and hard-drinking team.

Despite reassurances from Yahoo that Flickr is doing well, many will undoubtably look at this development and wonder whether the future for the service is as bright as the company would like us to think. TechCrunch also reported today that the situation inside the service isn’t too great.
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In case you’re wondering whether Yahoo still cares about Flickr (acquired in 2005), the answer appears to be yes. Chief Product Officer Blake Irving recently tweeted a short message affirming the company’s support for the popular photo sharing service, saying,

Q. Is Yahoo! committed to Flickr? A. Hell yes we are! We love this product and team; on strategy and profitable. #

How profitable? No one (except them) knows. Photography blogger Thomas Hawk estimates that it brings in about $50 million annually.

This should give loyal Flickr members some peace of mind knowing that even though they might sometimes feel unloved, Flickr doesn’t appear headed towards the same fate as Delicious, the bookmarking service also acquired in 2005 that Yahoo doesn’t love anymore.

(via Thomas Hawk)

Five years after acquiring the photo sharing service Flickr, Yahoo has finally obtained ownership of the domain name Flicker.com.

One of the common characteristics of Web 2.0 companies is the use of misspelled words in their name, since the correctly spelled words are typically too pricey for a bootstrapped web startup to purchase early on.

Flickr was one such company, settling for the now ubiquitous name after being unable to purchase Flicker.com.

As you might expect, the enormous popularity of Flickr has led to an absurd amount of traffic for Flicker.com, as people often type in the domain name either as a typo or being ignorant of the “correct” spelling”.
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If you’ve ever edited your Flickr photographs using the default image editor provided by Flickr, then you’ve used the web-based image editing software developed by Picnik.

Whenever you click the “Edit Photo” button above one of your photographs, it opens up the image in the Picnik editor.

Well, Picnik announced today on its blog that it has been acquired by Google. There aren’t many details available regarding the acquisition itself, but the web is abuzz now with speculation as to what Flickr will do.

Thomas Hawk suggests today’s purchase may signal that Google is trying to dethrone Flickr as image-sharing king of the web:

What else makes me think this? Google Buzz. While I consider Flickr superior in a lot of ways to Picasa today, the biggest advantage that Flickr has always held over their competitors is how strong a grip they’ve had on the social aspect of photo sharing. But now that Buzz has arrived on the scene (and your Buzz photos go into Picasa albums by default by the way), it would appear that Google finally has a viable social network to compete with Flickr’s own internal social network inside of Flickr. By combining the social power of buzz, with an enhanced version of Picasa, Google could mount a formidable competing offering to Yahoo’s Flickr.

It’s interesting that Flickr let Picnik slip into Google’s hands after partnering with them for so long.

What do you think today’s news means for Google’s Picasa and for Yahoo’s Flickr?

Many many years ago, in 2005, the rapidly expanding social photo-sharing domain, Flickr was purchased by the larger web empire, Yahoo!

Three years afterwards, Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield left his kingdom, returning to his original life as a “tin-smith,” as he called himself in his resignation letter.

Now, Butterfield’s back in the game–literally.

According to reports by Canada’s Globe and Mail and the Business Insider, Butterfield’s revisiting his original project, Game Neverending, which is a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG).

Apparently, Butterfield and his group, Ludicorp, now Tiny Speck Inc., dreamed up the game and even had a closed Beta version up and running a year before Flickr launched.

Flickr was originally going to be an element of the gameplay, says the Business Insider–but whether the photo-sharing feature will exist in the new version is unknown.

The Game Neverending site is up, but outdated, with sparse information.

GNE Museum also has some cryptic information, including prototype screenshots that bring to mind 1980s video game artwork and a subway map:

According to GNE Museum, the game involves the ability to travel to cleverly named locations, a humorous array of collectible items, and paper (as in reams, sheets, etc.) currency.

While there isn’t much information on the game itself, it’s probably the most honestly titled MMORPG out there–I mean honestly, when does anyone ever ‘finish’ playing WoW or DoTA, or Mafia Wars for that matter?

In any case, casual and social gaming like Facebook apps by Playfish/EA and countless iPhone games are prolific and easily accessible to a mainstream audience more than ever nowadays.

But after letting the project sit idly for so long, only time will tell whether Butterfield’s still got what it takes to ride the waves of Internet trends.