Yahoo Acquires IQ Engines, Plans To Make Flickr Galleries More Intelligent
At this rate, Yahoo is apt to acquire a company a week -- or so it seems. Since Marissa Mayer came to town as CEO, she has been on an acquisition rampage. Company after company has been swooped up by Yahoo, reportedly due to Mayer's desire to procure talented developer and engineering resources at an accelerated rate. This week, IQ Engines came out of the woodwork in order to announce that it too has been acquired by Yahoo.
The company's primary objective was to "transform the way people search and browse their photos by helping to process them intelligently." So, obviously, this particular move will see this team and this technology integrated into Yahoo's resurging Flickr platform. Earlier in the year, Mayer made Flickr viable again by instantly giving all users 1TB of free storage space, and nothing draws attention like free.
Of course, this also means that existing IQ Engines customers will be unable to use their API after 30 days. Such is the price of being purchased. It's unclear how exactly Flickr will benefit from the new team, but if ever Yahoo wanted to compete with iPhotos, Instagram, and Picasa, having a more intelligent searching engine would help. Plus, this could potentially help Yahoo with targeting advertisements to certain users based on recognition technology.
The company's primary objective was to "transform the way people search and browse their photos by helping to process them intelligently." So, obviously, this particular move will see this team and this technology integrated into Yahoo's resurging Flickr platform. Earlier in the year, Mayer made Flickr viable again by instantly giving all users 1TB of free storage space, and nothing draws attention like free.
Of course, this also means that existing IQ Engines customers will be unable to use their API after 30 days. Such is the price of being purchased. It's unclear how exactly Flickr will benefit from the new team, but if ever Yahoo wanted to compete with iPhotos, Instagram, and Picasa, having a more intelligent searching engine would help. Plus, this could potentially help Yahoo with targeting advertisements to certain users based on recognition technology.
