My "Pro" account of flickr just expired, it was not bough by me but a gift. I used it intensely and liked, now I am back at the basic level and missing a lot of the features. At about 25$ is not a big deal, I could easily renew it but I don’t want that: there are a lot of news everywhere about Yahoo willing to sell to Microsoft and Microsoft willing to buy Yahoo, I don’t endorse such a deal, I don’t want to give any of my money directly or indirectly to Microsoft and I don’t want my photos to end in Microsoft’s yard – I consider Microsoft the worst thing that happened to the computing industry.
Currently I am looking for a self hosted solution (advices appreciated), to run my own gallery, on my own hosting under my own domain, integrated with my other websites. I will keep my flickr account and using it until the deal with MS is closed since I have a lot of friends there and want to stay in touch with them.
What can I say more? Shame on you flickr, shame on you Yahoo: in little more than 3 months I was a "Pro" I brought you a 6 digits number of page views, if you can’t monetize that, maybe you deserve this faith.