Yahoo Acquires Xoopit Photo Tool

Yahoo said Wednesday that it has acquired Xoopit, a developer of photo sharing and organizing tools that work with Yahoo Mail and other Internet messaging services.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"With the integration of Xoopit's platform technology and capabilities, the task of sending photos via email will be as easy as it should be and sharing photo albums with friends and family members will also be a cinch," said Bryan Lamkin, Yahoo's senior VP for applications, in a blog post announcing the move.

Xoopit also works with Yahoo rival Google's Gmail service. Yahoo hinted that it may eventually terminate Gmail support for Xoopit.

"Although we are currently not taking new signups for the Gmail service, that service will continue to run for the time being as we begin to integrate over to the Yahoo infrastructure," the company said. It also said that the Gmail-specific Xoopit.com service will continue "for the time being."

Yahoo is looking to bolster its online services in an effort to keep pace with Google and Microsoft, even as the latter is said to have renewed interest in acquiring Yahoo's search business.

Yahoo on Tuesday unveiled its new Front Doors homepage. It offers direct links to popular sites like Facebook, Twitter, Ebay, and others. The links can be added to a new "My Favorites" column that appears on the home page's left hand side.

Earlier this month, Yahoo introduced its news Search Pad feature. Still in beta testing, it gives users a platform on which they can create notes based on their search results, share the information with friends, family, or business associates, and save the results for future use.

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