Despite having higher traffic figures than Flickr, Yahoo Photos will begin notifying users of the decision to close the service. This surprising news brought to light via TechCrunch. What’s intersting is that rather than forcing Yahoo Photos users to move to Flickr - which is what I assumed would happen, existing users will be given a handful of options including Flickr, Photobucket, Snapfish, Kodak, or Shutterfly.

The service will be shut down in favor of the newer and more social Flickr, which they acquired in March of 2005. There has long been an issue at Yahoo where newer services have competed with older services, and Yahoo has finally taken some strong action to getting their house in order with a consistent set of product offerings. Garlinghouse has been one of the stronger proponents of this strategy.

Yahoo is not forcing transition to Flickr - instead, users are being given the option of choosing among a number of top photo sharing sites. If you are a current Yahoo! Photos user, you will be given the option to export all your photos into Flickr (a one-click process) or you will be able to export to a few other services such as Photobucket, Snapfish, Kodak Gallery or Shutterfly.

Are there any readers who are current Yahoo Photos users that are a little disappointed with the decision to close the service? If there are any existing users, will you take advantage of the one-click import to Flickr? Or, will you move your libraries elsewhere?