Microsoft’s hostile takeover bid of Yahoo certainly has some Flickr folks in an uproar: Flickr Rebellion Brews at Specter of M$ Acquisition. (Absolutely LOVE the photo that leads that story, btw) And I can’t say that I blame the Flickr-ers. If MS buys Yahoo, I expect all the Yahoo parts (including Flickr) will be shoehorned into MS technologies: Microsoft .NET Live Flickr Web 2.0 Vista Extreme Edition. I don’t see this as Microsoft buying the technology — they are buying Yahoo search and the Yahoo community/social network. I don’t think they give a shit about all the great technology Yahoo has developed. For Microsoft, it’s all about search, ads, advertising revenue, and eyeballs. Microsoft is never going to grow a tight and dynamic community of users like Google or Yahoo. In the Microsoft world, if you can’t make friends, buy them.
I’ve always looked at sites such as Flickr, Blogger, etc., like a landlord. Move in, make yourself at home. But just as in real life (and I know this from personal experience), if a landlord is going to sell, you might just have the rug yanked out from under you. I look at my own web site and note I’m happy and content with running my own open source content management systems for the blog and the gallery. No high stakes mergers and acquisitions are going to affect me — I’m my own landlord. And I’ve already managed to free my life of most things Microsoft, and I’m content in knowing I’m not going to get sucked back in through decisions that are outside my control.
Your lucky to be fully computer-literate, Ron. Semi-literate rubes like myself are dependent on the kindness of strangers. I’m with WordPress presently, and quite content, but I often wonder if the dead hand of Gates will fall across my little blog someday.
*You’re* lucky, etc.… See, I really am semi-literate!
So does that make me, Ms. Bean, a “tenant” to my “landlord” Mr. Blogger? I am so not computer literate. As I have lamented before, if it weren’t for my husband, I’d still be using dial-up and a computer requiring 5 1/4 inch floppy disks. So what exactly is open source?…Alas, I rest my case. Ciao.