Yahoo Acquires Xoopit; Should You Care?

From PC World: Late yesterday, Yahoo announced that it had acquired Xoopit--a company known for its photo management tools--and said it plans to integrate the service as a new feature in Yahoo Mail. Xoopit is the company behind My Photos, a third-party application for Yahoo's e-mail service, but Xoopit is perhaps best known for its file management Firefox add-on for Gmail.

You may be wondering what this deal means for you--especially if you're a Gmail user. Here's what you need to know.

Neither Yahoo or Xoopit has said how much money will change hands, but rumor has it Xoopit's price tag was in the neighborhood of $20 million, according to All Things D. What has surprised some tech watchers about this sale is that it was Yahoo and not Google who snapped up the company, especially when you consider that Yahoo's My Photos is not as robust as Xoopit's Gmail add-on. The Gmail add-on allows you to catalog your files, photos, videos stored in Gmail, and also featured Facebook integration to let you post status updates and see who's on Facebook among your Gmail contacts (depending on that person's privacy settings). Xoopit's Gmail service would have been a natural fit to increase Gmail's productivity.

Nevertheless, photo management is a big deal for Yahoo, and for that reason Xoopit fits in nicely with the search company. Not only does Yahoo own Flickr, an extremely popular online photo sharing service, but the search company says Yahoo Mail is "home to one of the largest online photo repositories in the world." Xoopit's My Photos is also the most popular third-party application among Yahoo Mail users.

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