A Microsoft Run Flickr?
The business side is discussing the ramblings of a hostile take-over while the creatives are worried that their precious Yahoo! owned properties will fall victim to the Microsoft reins. There is a great flickr group getting much attention right now; “MICROSOFT: KEEP YOUR EVlL GRUBBY HANDS OFF OF OUR FLICKR“.
I couldn’t let the geeks have all the fun, I thought I’d sneak away five minutes and put together a piece of my own to add to the group and to the fun.
Yahoo! was seemingly always the Mac equivalent online as a Microsoft alternative; well that was before Google took over everything. What will those anti-Microsoft fanatics do once the their precious alternative becomes absorbed by the beast? While Google has superior technology, extreme mass adoption and clean minimalistic interfaces — they’ve always lacked a bit of personality; especially in context of this social web we’ve embarked upon.
Picasa is no where near as social as Flickr — the technology might be better, but flickr’s personality is one that can’t be beaten. A personality obviously comprised of its user base, will Picasa step-up or will flickr competitors such as Zoomr take-over? It will be a sad day if the Yahoo! properties we’ve all come to know and love fall under the control of Microsoft that seems to destroy everything they touch.
- February 4th, 2008
- 3comments
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I think generally people just need to chill a bit. This is the Web 2.0 echo chamber at its best. We don’t know what’s going to happen.
Even if Yahoo does get acquired by Microsoft, it takes a year plus to get things integrated in a meaningful way.
Plus… everyone freaked out about Yahoo acquiring Flickr but nothing bad happened.
I agree with Justin, however on the other hand if you look at Microsoft’s track record, they have done far more harm to acquisitions than help. When every article you read focuses on “competing with google’s ad network”, it does cause one to worry about what will happen to what the users want.
First and foremost … it just a bunch of people having a little fun and poking fun at everyone’s favorite bully, Microsoft. I think this is the best way for people to voice their concerns, through humor via the application we want to save.
I’d disagree though, Yahoo running flickr has had negative impacts … nothing extreme yet, but losing my flickr user ID I’d say it pretty large and being forced to create a Yahoo! account is significant.
Microsoft will kill flickr … they will bloat it to hell and put it head to head with picasa both from a feature perspective and a revenue one.
And, why because it takes a year are we to chill out? That means I have less than a year to find a suitable replacement and hope they have an easy way to migrate my photos off flickr and into the new system.