rogerd - 3:45 pm on Feb 26, 2008 (gmt 0)

I hope that this doesn't end up resulting in big price jumps at istockphoto. I always wondered if Getty bought them mainly to put them out of business, though certainly competitors could spring up in their place.

While it seems like lunacy to sell images for a few dollars, at least if you normally charge hundreds, there's an important market niche there. When images are cheap, it's easy to stick them in blog posts, PowerPoint presentations, web site content pages that couldn't possibly justify a costly image, etc.

Their pricing has been creeping up, and I can imagine a financially oriented buyer killing the golden goose by raising prices even higher.