TechCrunch is reportng that Yahoo! has decided to shutdown their Yahoo! Photos service and will be announcing that shortly.. They acquired Flickr 2 years back and the popularity it has gained has been phenomenal. It is bad for any business to run two of their own services competing with each other. This is a really wise decision for Yahoo.

One good thing about the shutdown is that Yahoo is not going force us to move to Flickr (?). They are making it very easy by offering a one-click transfer to Flickr. I have my old pictures in Yahoo Photos as well in multiple accounts.. Its time to move them all into Flickr!! That is after Yahoo! announces this officially, of course.

Here are your options if you are a Yahoo! Photos user.

• Export your pictures to Flickr (ShanKri-la recommendation)
• Export your pictures to other top photo sites like PhotoBucket (we use this for our image storage and we like it), Snapfish, Kodak Picture Gallery, etc. I wonder if Google’s Picasa Web Albums would jump in the fray to get some users
• Download full size photos to your computer
• Order CDs & prints at a discount.

What to expect?
For a regular Yahoo! Photos user, using Flickr at first might seem a little different largely due to the demographics. Much of the younger crowd are already on Flickr and know their way around. I have close to 50 albums/folders in Yahoo Photos & when I export them to my free Flickr account, I wonder how it would pan out as it offers only 3 sets (kinda like albums). As much as I talk about Flickr, I haven’t shelled it out for a PRO account yet but this might be the clincher for me to move all my pictures to one place.

More reading:

• Yahoo! Photos is shutting down. Flickr is the new hotness [via CNET]
• Flickr Eats Yahoo! Photos (Not The Other Way Round) [via Read/WriteWeb]

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