Adobe buy Macromedia

Adobe and Macromedia logosThe creative industry is buzzing this morning after it was announced that Adobe are set to buy Macromedia in a deal worth $3.5 billion.

Both companies have been rivals over the last 10 years or so in the market to supply software to the creative industry. Although both have software which directly rivals the others (Freehand and Illustrator, Fireworks and Image Ready), they’ve happily co-existed for years in different areas, with Adobe dominating the market for image and video editing (with Photoshop and Premiere) and Macromedia doing nicely in the web and multimedia corner (Dreamweaver, Flash and Director).

It’ll be interesting to see what Adobe plans to do with Macromedia’s products — Flash in particular (SVG and PDF integration?). However, I have a nagging doubt about who this deal benefits (apart from Macromedia shareholders). Once the deal is complete Adobe will have next to no competitors in the marketplace — the textbook definition of a monopoly. And as we’ve seen by Microsoft’s example, monopolies are not good for the consumer.

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Posted 4 years, 11 months ago

This seems to be the "NEWS OF THE DAY". from netdiver to stylegala ... Adobe has rocked the design world! Can you imagine combining FireWorks and Photoshop (and I’m not talking about the name).

tripeak · www · 4 years, 11 months ago

Aye, it’s everywhere today. I think a lot of people were taken by surprise – I can’t recall any rumours about the take over – it just seemed to happen overnight.

Mac NN
http://www.macnn.com/articles/05/04/18/adobe.to.buy.macromedia/

Ars Technica
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050418-4817.html

BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4456895.stm

Phil · www · 4 years, 11 months ago

Your website is amazing mate. True inspiration. Gret job.

Josh · www · 4 years, 10 months ago

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My name is Phil Lindsay, a web guy from Scotland, now living in Newcastle upon Tyne in England. I also run a web design company called Presence. You can email me at phil@xlab.co.uk, read more ramblings on my Twitter stream and view my photos on Flickr. You can grab the RSS feed for this weblog here.