In a move that many consider a long time coming, Yahoo! should be announcing the closure of Yahoo! Photos some time today. Michael Arrington at TechCrunch got the scoop last night at a CEO dinner for Outcast, a PR event, from Brad Garlinghouse (Yahoo SVP Communications & Communities) and Stewart Butterfield (Cofounder of Flickr). The two said Photos would be slowly shut down over the next few months, with options to switch not only to Flickr, but also Photobucket, Snapfish, Kodak Gallery and Shutterfly. Of course, switching to Flickr will be a one-click process, but the other services have already built their own transitioning tools, and Yahoo! will be offering discounted prices on things like CDs and prints for Photos users. Showing an unusual openness to the competition during a transition like this, Butterfield told Arrington: "We have no interest in forcing anyone to switch to Flickr... We want happy users."

This move was brought on largely because of a recent and steady drop in traffic to Yahoo! Photos. While the doomed service surprisingly dwarfs Flickr in terms of total uploaded photos - 2 billion / 500 million, respectively - Flickr very recently overtook Yahoo! Photos in terms of growth and unique visitor traffic. This closure should create a significant spike for Flickr over the coming months, as we're betting that most users will probably opt for the one-click transition instead of dealing with any potential quirks from using the tools built by competing sites. Of course, time will tell, and it will be interesting to see just how well the move goes.

Also mentioned in brief at the very end of Arrington's post is Butterfield's confirmation that Flickr will "soon" do video, though we have no details or ETA on this much-requested feature. However, once this debuts, Flickr will then have both a rich and talented photography community, as well as the potential to become a serious competitor to the likes of YouTube, MySpace and Facebook once video is edited into the mix - if the community approves. Between these two major announcements, we're a bit more interested in how video will fare on a photo enthusiast's site. Stay tuned for more details.

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington is reporting on a "completely unsubstantiated" rumor that Google is in the final stages of closing a deal to acquire YouTube for $1.6 billion. He says his source for the rumor is "very good," but that he hasn't been able to get any confirmation. Google certainly has the cash and resources for this kind of transaction, and is probably one of the few companies that isn't scared stupid by the pile of lawsuits that some say loom over YouTube's head, but is YouTube really a fit for Google? Technologically, YouTube doesn't have anything that Google couldn't whip up in a few hours. YouTube does, however, have the social networking savvy that Google has proven itself to be not especially good at. Arrington puts the odds for this rumor at "40% likely to be at least partially true," but my gut says lower--30% or so.

Update: The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that Google and YouTube are indeed in talks, but they are in the early stages and could break off. It quotes the same $1.6 billion figure that Arrington cited.

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington has written an article called The Flickr Gunners in which he examines three promising new services that are gunning for Flickr's deeply entrenched position as king of the photo-sharing hill. His picks are BubbleShare, the not-yet-launched Ookles from Feedster founder Scott Johnson, and 17-year-old Kristopher Tate's brainchild  Zooomr. Arrington doesn't go into a lot of detail with any of the services, but these are definitely three Web 2.0 ventures to keep an eye on.