No one is safe today.   I kid cause I love but seriously, not loving the Getty acquirement of one of my favorite stock photo sites – www.sxc.hu.

Here’s why:

Yep.  That’s what I was met with when doing a search for RED WINE.  Nothing too difficult.

Go there… Try to do a search on anything now.  Not only do the images take forever to load, the thumbnails are now skewed and disproportionate and when you click certain thumbnails, it says, “This image has been deleted.”

Awesome.  Way to sell out to an overpowered company who ends up ruining what you’ve got.

This is the problem with companies building these awesome sites and selling out.  They ruin the foundation they’ve built.  Does Getty really care about the free site?  Of course not.  Check out all of the ads now for iStock Photo. Oh, they acquired them too. *snicker*

So, when you’re on your favorite site, you’re told to TRUST THE ORIGINAL… Uhhh… Go away?  This is my original…

Bah.  This is what’s wrong with huge institutions scooping up the little guys.

My only hope is that www.stockxpert.com doesn’t sell out to Getty…………… Pleasssssssssssse.

Just checked out www.sxc.hu and look:

What shall we bet that Getty never adds more images to this site.  Just moves them all over to their paid sites.

** Update: July 29, 2009 @ 4:57pm **

Getty and iStock Photo have both Tweeted me to say that they are aware of the server lag due to the media and press around the site and they are working on it.  I have my fingers crossed.