Just over a year ago now, SmugMug announced the acquisition of Flickr from Verizon’s Oath (née, Yahoo). At the time, I didn’t much care, frankly. My use of Flickr was the same as many people who were suckling at the free storage teat that the site offered; I had (and still have) about 4,000 digital photos uploaded which I put there for accessibility to family and clients.
Then late last year, SmugMug started sending lots of e-mail to me and others: The free ride was, in large part, coming to an end. Or, at least, a truncation — only the newest 1,000 photos would be retained unless I acted promptly. I hemmed. I hawed. And in the end, I paid. Why?
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