Yahoo Adds Flickr Photos to Search

Yahoo said Thursday that it had begun to integrate Flickr photos into its search result pages, allowing users to search through Flickr's vast collection of user-submitted pictures. While the service is currently limited to a select number of keywords, Yahoo plans to expand the program in the future.

A search for "interesting photos" turns up results of images ranging from artistic photography to extreme close-ups of flora and fauna, while a search for "funny photos" would bring up images that the Flickr community has tagged as having a humorous slant.

"Searching for things that people think are funny is a good example of a query where combining what the community knows -- and tags -- with what algorithms can compute can lead to better search results," Yahoo! Search's Lingxian Ding said of the new service.

The Sunnyvale, Calif. based search company bought the social photography site Flickr in March of last year. Social networking has become somewhat of a hot commodity for big Internet corporations, with several making acquisitions of their own.

Fox bought MySpace last year in a half-billion dollar deal, and Sony Pictures acquired social video site Grouper on Wednesday for $65 million. Even YouTube is reportedly looking for a buyer -- the company has apparently put a $1 billion price tag on the service.