Yahoo! snaps up photo site Flickr

Yahoo! has purchased online photo-sharing service Flickr, less than a week after the internet giant launched a beta test of a new blogging tool.

Vancouver, British Columbia-based Flickr lets users upload digital photos from computers and camera phones, put together photo albums and post photos to blogs, among other things.

Joanna Stevens, a spokeswoman for Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo!, confirmed the deal Sunday but did not disclose the terms.

"We look forward to working with them for their innovation and product development across the Yahoo! Network in the coming months," she said.

Stevens said Flickr will remain a standalone site for now. The company's employees, however, will relocate to Sunnyvale later this year.

Earlier this week, Yahoo! announced Yahoo 360. The service combines a new blogging tool along with several long-time Yahoo! products, including instant messaging, photo storage and sharing and internet radio. It also offers tools for sharing recommendations about places to eat, favourite movies, music and so on.

Both the 360 move and the acquisition of Flickr and parent company Ludicorp Research & Development come as social networking and blogging draw increased interest from rivals. Microsoft in December added a blog product for its MSN web service, called MSN Spaces. Google, meanwhile, owns web log service Blogger and social networking site Orkut.

Jim Hu writes for CNET News.com. CNET News.com's Evan Hansen also contributed to this report.