And how do you or I know it is foolish or not? This is one persons opinion. Do you have their financials to look through? Do you really know why pink slips were given? How do you know Yahoo! isn't preparing Flickr for sale and trying to clean up balance sheet?
I don't.
A huge culture loss absolutely, I agree.
Why not sell the arm (more like tentacle)? Flickr has a huge fanbase and great street cred, if it's not sustainable to keep it, why not sell it?
The only answer I can think of is that the tough decisions are not being made.... what's being decided is how to keep the cash flow going until the inevitable external acquisition, mining brand value.
I've lived in this kind of corporate mentality. Expect Yahoo to be sold soon - just wonder who's buying.
With all that free cash, along with the Alibaba deal, they can really make some stuff happen.