When we think of cartoons today, we think of Saturday morning children’s entertainment. We think of images drawn in bright colors, dealing in fanciful concepts, moving at a quick pace. Sometimes they deal with ethical struggles of selfishness. There is a common story arc of the main character indulging him or herself, hurting people around him/her, and ultimately learning a lesson about sharing or togetherness. When people think of cartoons today they don’t think of them as being places to make sweeping statements about race relations, or a place to influence opinion on national enemies, or a place to make jokes about domestic violence.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gnal/2234037367/

photo by Gnal

Microsoft has proposed a $44.6 billion dollar deal to take over the struggling internet entity, Yahoo.com. Yahoo is being described as being “backed into a corner” with such an offer as it is far above the other buyout offers it has received, and no other company offering to top Microsoft Corp’s proposal. The offer itself sounds hard to turn down and the other options fraught with peril.

Going private may involve the layoffs of a third of Yahoo’s workforce. A deal with Google would have to have to pass the anti-trust test since both companies have a great share of the search engine market and a combination of the two would be a near monopoly of 80% of the market. Breaking up Yahoo into its useful parts is another option in speculation. A last option would be a “poison pill” action wherein Yahoo that could issue millions of new shares making any acquisition incredibly expensive. But then there are always the shareholders to please, and a fat wad of money is hard to turn down, especially when it is desperately needed.

If Microsoft buys Yahoo, what would it mean? What would change? Although Yahoo is a major search engine and internet portal, it is also more than the sum of its parts. Yahoo was the web browser that seemed the most personable, the most suited for web denizens who wanted to do more than simply search and be a voyeur. It was a way for people to connect and organize, through such things as their messenger program and Yahoo groups, both which took hold of users to an extent not matched by MSN messenger.

Yahoo is also the owner of the photo hosting website Flickr.com. Flickr isn’t a simple photo hosting website either. Flickr is a photosharing community that happens to photo host. There are thousands of groups and over 2 billion photos. It is a highly popular site filled with many creative photographers.

Naturally, when news of the takeover bid was announced, Flickrites started an online visual protest. Members of the Flickr community have created photo group called “Microsoft: Keep your grubby hands of our flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/microsoft-keep-your-evil-grubby-hands-off-our-flickr

Some photos found in the photostream:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mringlein/2243521218/in/pool-microsoft-keep-your-evil-grubby-hands-off-our-flickr photo by mringlein

http://www.flickr.com/photos/haros/2242531773/in/pool-microsoft-keep-your-evil-grubby-hands-off-our-flickr“>Photo by Damknom

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2383/2234114073_c4f6329878.jp

photo be e Sigalakos

Flickr, which adds another level of questioning from me. Flickr has also become a database of images which, if the creator so chooses, can the basis for derivative work or can be shared on blogs or can be left completely alone with all rights reserved. What is this system going to look like when it is owned by a copywriting heavyweight that revels in closed source programming? What happens to said images, what happens to all the Flickrites who love it as is? Will they run to Picasa, Google’s photosharing service? Where will the new community be? We will have to see how this plays out, in the meantime, check out the visual protest so far.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/microsoft-keep-your-evil-grubby-hands-off-our-flickr/