Jeremy mentions a blog entry that suggests Google will buy Flickr. I could certainly see this as a possibility, though I agree with Jeremy, I’m not sure that this would be a good thing. As much as most of us would like to see smaller companies like Flickr do well by themselves, at some point be purchased by someone else becomes a serious question. So you’ve got to ask yourself, if it were to be inventible that Flickr gets purchased, which company would people trust the most not to screw it up? Looking at it from that light I think that Google would do ok, but perhaps Apple would be another possibility. Perhaps an iPhoto + Flickr (iFlickr?).
An Apple and Flickr marriage would work even better if iPhoto ran on Windows and Mac (ala iTunes). Perhaps Apple would start making specific, strategic applications cross platform.
If anyone were to buy Flickr it seems like Microsoft and Google would be the two most likely candidates. Perhaps I should be hoping that Goolge buys Flickr.