BuzzMachine: Posts from March 20, 2005

Yahoo buys Flickr

: The news is on Flickr’s blog. Discussion here, where honcho Caterina Fake explains:

So you’re asking: why are you being acquired? Why Yahoo?

We thought about lots of ways to keep Flickr going, growing, and

getting better. We considered taking VC money, more angel

investment, bootstrapping it and selling.

When Yahoo first approached us eons ago, we were pretty

skeptical. But after meeting the people on the Yahoo team and

getting a picture of where they were going, we got religion.

Maybe that’s too strong. We realized we were all eating at the

same church potluck.

The things that were important to us were: being open, building

innovative stuff and kicking ass. Were these people OUR people?

Yes. See the stuff Yahoo’s announced recently (including, of

course,this)? They’re evolving in really interesting ways —

and from our look inside, we know know that there’s a lot more

coming.

Yahoo won’t be the Yahoo you’ve come to take for granted.

Competition (with that other company with two O’s in its name)

has done great things for Yahoo. Dude.

I wonder whether this could be the antibubble: rather than going for the next round of financing and the IPO, they sought haven in a big (still kinda new) company with benfits, adminstration, and cool hats. I think that bodes well for other smart start-ups: It’s no longer just about an exit strategy. It’s about a safety strategy. And that will work only if the acquiring company is smart enough to let the acquired company grow: Everything AOL bought disappeared. Everything the old Yahoo bought (see: Broadcast.com and the billions that allowed Mark Cuban to become an obnoxious rich man) disappeared. But when Google bought Blogger, it got better. Can happen. Let’s hope.

: More from Jeremy Zowodny and Jeff Clavier.

: LATER: Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Barry Diller is buying fifth-rank search-engine ASK for $2 billion.

: On Flickr and Yaho, Dave Winr says it should have been the other way around.