Adobe to aquire Macromedia for $3.4 billion. Whoa! At first I thought this was a late April fool’s joke. ¶
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Matt Mullenweg is one of PC World’s Top 50 People on the Web, Inc.com’s 30 under 30, and Business Week’s 25 Most Influential People on the Web. 
Tom | April 18th, 2005 @ 8:03 am |
I still cannot belive this news. it makes my head spin.
alvin | April 18th, 2005 @ 8:07 am |
Matt, i think you meant to say Adobe?
Jay Reding | April 18th, 2005 @ 8:34 am |
In other news, Michael Moore has become President Bush’s press secretary, cats and dogs are living together, and Microsoft will be releasing the source code to Windows under the GPL.
If tomorrow they announce Duke Nukem Forever is going gold I’m official curling under my desk in the fetal position and whimpering like a whipped pup.
Craig Hartel | April 18th, 2005 @ 9:05 am |
Jay,
It’s not BS. Check out Macromedia’s web site: http://www.macromedia.com/ or are you suggesting that BOTH Adobe and Macromedia had their sites hacked?
Craig Hartel | April 18th, 2005 @ 9:10 am |
Here’s a link to Mike Chambers’ blog – he’s a product manager in developer relations with Macromedia.
Hanni | April 18th, 2005 @ 10:49 am |
You’re not the only one!
Dan | April 18th, 2005 @ 1:10 pm |
Adobe is going to have a bit of a monopoly of the professional design packages, will this be good?
Jay Reding | April 18th, 2005 @ 1:13 pm |
Craig: No, I knew it was real, I still just can’t wrap my head around the concept that those two would merge…
On the other hand, it does almost make sense. Almost all the big web development tools will come from the same company now, and Dreamweaver, Flash. and Photoshop are practically the Holy Trinity of web design these days.
I just hope that Adobe doesn’t screw up what Macromedia had going for them. Photoshop’s the best in the industry, bar none, but Adobe’s been making some questionable decisions lately. (My company got burned by the loss of Adobe Approval, which really put a dent in our e-signature projects.) This could be a great combination like chocolate and peanut butter, or it could end up being like Ben and J-Lo, a lot of fuss for a match that just doesn’t work. I’m hoping for the former, but worried it’s going to be the latter.
Frank | April 18th, 2005 @ 3:15 pm |
I have been a long time Macromedia fan, but a long time opponent of Adobe. Their stuff is good, but it is over priced and the license structure is really bad. I hope Adode does not do to Macromedia what Corel did to Wordperfect and turn a leading product into a also ran. I have both Photoshop and Fireworks, I prefer the latter, I tried Go Live on a friends box and never liked it, and Flash is just the total bomb. My video editing friends love Premiere and Illustrator, but I have limited time with either so I will just assume they are good. I would hope that Go Live would go away, Fireworks and Photoshop both still exsist for their various strengths because they both have some (the ability to edit any type file makes Fireworks worth keeping), and that the rest of the line of both companies continues as there is little overlap directly. The intergertation of Reader/.pdf generaton into Dreamweaver would rock though.
Craig Hartel | April 18th, 2005 @ 3:30 pm |
Jay,
I was misreading your remarks, obviously! Sorry!
BTW, Adobe doesn’t do web graphics well. PS is NOT a web graphics application, although it is used that way. Fireworks does this much better. That said, there are definitely some things from PS that would be nice to have in FW, and there are likely a few vector tools in FW that might be nice in PS.
I’m not sure how to feel about this merger. Assuming it goes ahead, it really looks like there is less competition for the target audiences these products serve. I’m also more fond of Macromedia because it is more affordable that most Adobe solutions. Not cheap, but cheaper, anyway.
Like most things, we’ll just have to wait and see. The current MM product development series will be maintained, but it’s likely that this will be the last of the Studio MX products as we know it.
Munnday | April 18th, 2005 @ 5:42 pm |
Wow I must say I am shocked to reas this, I had no idea something like this was on the cards. It will be interesting to see how it all turns up after they merge…
Raudel | April 18th, 2005 @ 8:56 pm |
EEEK! That’s gonna change a few things. First, what’s going to happen with all that software I just bought from Macromedia? Will I have to call Adobe to get support? Toooo many questions. Yeah, I was pretty much shocked too.
Jay Reding | April 19th, 2005 @ 4:14 am |
What makes it especially weird is that the Macromedia brand name is going to go away after a while and be replaced by Adobe. I don’t think I can get used to the sound of “Adobe Dreamweaver” It’s kinda like “Pope Cletus I,” just not a combination you’d think you’d ever hear.