Flickr is owned by Yahoo! yes, but it is also something that recently has been occupying several hours a day of my time. Now THAT is a successful product. I can’t see Microsoft developing a plug in, that’s what outside developers are for and the SDK is available to all. I know that at least one Flickr plug in is in the development stage as we speak.

Of course Microsoft could also always choose to create their own version of Flickr if they wanted to as well. I did a post for the road map a while back here.

One of the powerful aspects of owning a top photo sharing site is the possibility to own image search in the future. Microsoft, Google, Ask Jeeves and Yahoo! all have extremely mediocre image search.

Search for a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge on Google image search and see what you get — super mediocre images of a great photographic subject. By owning an online photo sharing site Microsoft could use user online ranking data to prioritize image search and make MSN image search the clear leader. Although image search is a much smaller subset than text search it would be a powerful toehold in the Google dominated world.

Although I have not seen this type of thing appear at Yahoo! yet (and with the strong grass roots community spirit at Flickr you’d probably need user buy in and even a possible opt in approach) if they are smart they would be working on this too. Yahoo! has a huge leg up owning Flickr.

If you want to see the type of amazing photography I’m talking about check out my current favorite’s list at Flickr.

If these images showed up as top image searches for their respective search categories no one would use any other image search service.

Yahoo! got Flickr on the cheap. Microsoft should be developing something like this right now in order to compete in the future. They also have a natural tie in with Media Center. If Microsoft tied in an online photo sharing service with my picture slide shows you would have instant built in content on a PC. These powerful slide shows would add to the wow factor of the product.

It works on a lot of different levels.

[Edited to make links clickable. - EB]

Now how much more excited would you be if your image search returned this? (289 people call this a favorite at Flickr by the way)

vs.

Google’s search for the term “bridesmaids” here

By using user favorite rankings and ratings in image search you could create a much more powerful user experience. Google does include some Flickr results in their image searches but they lack the proprietary data that Yahoo! now has for potentially determining which ones are ranked high and ought to be on the first page of search.

Microsoft should be a player in this game as well. Instead of fantastic shots like the Flickr one above you get this.

In my opinion slightly better than Google actually but still a far cry from what it could be with user ranking data.

At present Yahoo!’s search is worse than both Google’s and MSN but I suspect that Flickr and rankings might get mixed in at some point to create a much better user experience.

Link

[Edited to make links clickable. - EB]