MicroSoft Acquires Photo Sharing Site

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

(Source) Ah, Microsoft. Always late to the game. Maybe it’s a part of their strategy: wait until Google (Picasa Web Albums) and Yahoo (Flickr) establish solid market positions, and then develop or buy an (usually inferior) product of their own and try to corner those remaining 10% of users.

It’s difficult to disagree with that analysis when MicroSoft routinely shows up late for its own party. You would have thought that the way Internet Explorer beat the socks off of Netscape Communicator back in the 1990s that MicroSoft would have emerged as a major player in the Internet game. Not so. MicroSoft is struggling as a mere minor player and they have no one to blame but themselves.

This latest move will certainly do nothing but help Google and Yahoo (Picasa and Flickr). Not many people had even heard of WebFives before news broke that MicroSoft was purchasing the rights to the technology behind the photo sharing site. Now, they likely never will. MicroSoft has a way of rolling out new technology too slow for it to matter. When they do finally get it rolled out it isn’t nearly as good as what’s already on the market.

But WebFives was out there. Now they won’t be. At least until MicroSoft gets it incorporated into its own search engine MSN Live Search. Meanwhile, WebFives users will likely migrate to Flickr and Picasa. My bet is that Flickr will get the majority of them, if they haven’t already. Either way, those folks sharing their photos who are looking for links and SEO for their efforts might find it, but it won’t be easy. Your best bet is probably to host them on your own server in a folder on your website dedicated solely to photos.