adam lasnik

The now-Googler Adam Lasnik predicted in December 2004 (he was not working for Google at the time) that Google will buy Flickr in 2005, he reasoned that,

  • [Flickr’s] already well-respected and well-liked by bloggers, including at least one prominent Blogger.com team member.
  • Open API!
  • Small, smart, dedicated team behind the service.
  • It’s not evil; Flickr strongly considers member concerns and interests.
  • Flickr uses tags, very similar in concept to Gmail’s labels.
  • Strong focus on community: groups, live chats, etc.
  • It’s based in Vancouver, not all that far from Google’s new Washington office.

Well, by any measure, this is rational, I would think the same as well, but things don’t always go the way we would expect. And what goes into our history book is that Yahoo was the one that bought it and Google launched Flickr-killer (your mileage may vary) - Picasa Web Albums a year later.

However, my book says, “Picasa Web Albums is losing the game so far.” I guess things would have been much different if Google bought Flickr, say, I would have become a camera whore (2nd OR 3rd definition).

In a way, I am kinda glad that they didn’t. :)

[photo from Adam’s Flickr album. He got promoted?]