SmugMug photo site purchases rival Flickr

Flickr, the popular photo-sharing site that has long been part of Yahoo, will soon have a new owner — Mountain View firm SmugMug.

SmugMug, a rival photo-sharing site, said Friday that the companies will continue to operate as separate properties “with the shared goal of providing photographers with both a place to fit in and a place to stand out.” Flickr, with offices in San Francisco, has more than 75 million accounts, while SmugMug has millions of paying customers, SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill said.

“We will move heaven and earth to thrill you and photographers everywhere,” MacAskill wrote in response to a Twitter user.

MacAskill said in an interview that he intends to bring Flickr’s staff — estimat-

ed at dozens of people — to SmugMug, and the company is looking for a San Francisco office that will help accommodate those employees.

“We want them all, and I think they all want to come,” he said. “They are a great team.”

The terms of the deal were not made public.

Yahoo acquired Flickr in 2005, an early Web deal that the search giant hoped would help revitalize it. But many observers felt that Flickr did not reach its full potential, losing ground to upstarts like Facebook and Instagram

“We want them all, and I think they all want to come.” Don MacAskill, SmugMug CEO, on Flickr’s staff

for social and mobile photo sharing. Longtime users complained that Flickr under Yahoo was slow to add features. Under former CEO Marissa Mayer, Yahoo sought to rejuvenate Flickr by promising more storage, but those efforts didn’t seem to help Flickr regain lost ground.

There were also some snafus, like when Flickr’s photo-categorizing software labeled some black people as “apes” or when Flickr pulled millions of photos from its online marketplace after photographers grew concerned that the company might not share revenue or notify photographers whose work was being sold through Creative Commons licenses.

Flickr said that it is “returning to the focus that made us the world’s trailblazing online photography community.”

“We are reinforcing our commitment to creators and making sure Flickr remains the best place for them to connect, to share, and to develop their passion,” the company said.

Verizon purchased Yahoo’s Internet properties last year for $4.5 billion. It recently sold Polyvore, an online fashion site.