As soon as the news hit the wires that Microsoft is proposing a $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo, Flickr users began posting anti-Microsoft images, satirical "Flickr Live" logos and announcing they will abandon Flickr if it falls into Microsoft hands, fearing such a move would mark the beginning of the end.

Microsoft has established its dominance on the desktop, its web properties lag behind those of Yahoo and others

As this graph comparing acquisitions by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft shows, Microsoft has focused on back-end and enterprise companies like devBiz or DesktopStandard, while Yahoo and Google are more adept at scooping up choice consumer startups like YouTube, MyBlogLog or Feedburner

Yahoo’s efforts to embrace the latest online standards — like OpenID, a single login mechanism, which was recently added to all Flickr accounts — might not succeed under Microsoft

Yahoo declined to comment for this story.