A brief history of Smugmug's acquisition of Flickr

After acquiring Flickr, SmugMug have announced a limit of 1000 photos for the free accounts and a doubling of the PRO membership fees. Unfortunately not in that order.  So shortly after cancelling my PRO membership as I was unwilling to shell out double for no useful improvements, I am told I will lose 12000+ of my 13000+ images stored on Flickr. It seems to me SmugMug are blackmailing me to come back... Just as well I've already downloaded and moved all my photos to OneDrive about a year ago. Now all I need to do is recreate the albums and I can say, very sadly, goodbye to Flickr.  Looks like I will also be able to finally start closing my yahoo account.

Having looked at SmugMug's pricing policy, I can see that the reason for these changes is to align Flickr pricing to SmugMug pricing. Otherwise SmugMug would own two services competing on price.  Given this, the question must surely be, how long before Flickr is nothing but an alias for SmugMug?

February 2004

Flickr is created.

Early 2005

I join Flickr on a free account.

March 2005

Yahoo buy Flickr.

5th September 2005

I become a Pro member and have been Pro ever since I believe. My payment through PayPal still went to Ludicorp.

20th April 2018

Flickr announced they have been acquired by Smugmug.

http://blog.flickr.net/en/2018/04/20/together-smugmug-flickr/

https://blog.flickr.net/en/2018/04/20/together-smugmug-flickr-faq/

25th May 2018

Flickr officially becomes a part of Smugmug.

16th August 2018

Smugmug annouce that PRO membership will double in price from ~$25/year to ~50$/year

1st November 2018

Smugmug announce the 1000 photo limit for free accounts. All photos beyond this limit will simply be deleted.

https://blog.flickr.net/en/2018/11/01/changing-flickr-free-accounts-1000-photos/

https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157702923034264/page25/