Yahoo acquired Xoopit social photo management service, first developed as an add-on for Google's Gmail, the company announced late Wednesday.

Xoopit is a tool that searches through photos and video files stored in users Gmail account and makes them open for comments the users friends on social networking sites. In addition to e-mail attachments, the service also scours photos and videos shared through sites such as Shutterfly, Google's Youtube and Picasa Web Albums, or Yahoo's Flickr.

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.

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 in a rush to boost its online services in a bid to keep up with Google and Microsoft. Earlier on Tuesday, Yahoo unveiled its new homepage that has direct links to popular sites like Facebook, Twitter, Ebay, and others.

Yahoo also introduced its new Search Pad feature this month. Search Pad service, an online notebook for saving and sharing notes, links and Web site content when conducting research using the company's search engine.

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