My Thoughts on the Adobe-Macromedia Deal

It is pretty clear from the acquisition that Adobe is going to be making a major push into web media. They have tried a few times with tools like InDesign and LiveMotion to make some progress, but Macromedia has been extremely successful at fending off their attacks with Dreamweaver and Flash. As a result, Adobe has been able to rule the desktop publishing market and Macromedia has been able to rule the web content market. The mix of the two companies is going to make one hell of a powerful media creation beast. Ok, but that is the obvious stuff. Obviously anyone who buys out Macromedia wants Flash, because Flash is what Macromedia is all about. What else might this mean?

If you look at Macromedia's actions over the past year or so, it seemed pretty likely that they were looking for a buyer. They were gradually buying up smaller companies to add to their arsenal and make themselves more attractive to potential buyers. Choosing eHelp and Presedia as acquisitions tells me that perhaps Adobe is interested in making some moves into the super hot eLearning market. Right now, all Adobe really has going for them is PDF--which is a pretty darn valueble assest, but is really more suited for the web of the past than the web of the future. PDF was great when web pages were static, but web pages aren't static anymore and PDFs are boring these days. The next generation web is all about media, and that is where Flash comes into the picture. eHelp and Presedia were two companies in the front of the eLearning pack, and the timing of these two acquisitions is just too close to mean nothing. However, this also means that eHelp / Presedia customers are in for even more fun as their products all get jumbled up in yet another acquisition. Even Macromedia didn't continue to support all of eHelp's products...

For designers, this acquisition is definately a good thing. They get the best of both worlds as Macromedia and Adobe tag team anyone who attempts to challenge them. Developers, on the other hand, may not have it so lucky. What is to become of Cold Fusion? What about Flex? One of my long-standing complaints about Macromedia is that they don't understand developers. Surely this isn't going to be helped by Macromedia merging with an even more designer centric company. I definately trust the management at Adobe a bit more than Macromedia's management, but you can't help but realize that Adobe really doesn't have a lot of experience with developer centric software. Personally, I would have much rather seen Microsoft acquire Macromedia and give us some kick-ass next generation web tools, but they are too focused on Avalon and XAML right now, so we'll have to leave that to the Xamlon guys or get everyone running Avalon so we can deliver the stuff natively.

In any case, one thing is certain, watching this play out is going to be very interesting.

11 Comments


  • Nice writeup! Thanks.

  • Jesse, you missed the whole PDF versus SVG fight going on within Adobe, and the effect Macromedia will have on this internal battle. You could possible see some very cool SVG tools built by the Macromedia folks (who wouldn't touch SVG on their own). Or it could be the death of SVG within Adobe. It could go either way.

  • I find SVG vs. Flash just as interesting, if not more interesting, than SVG vs. PDF. I have a feeling there is going to be a lot of cussing soon if this deal goes through.

  • What I find interesting is the product overlap wrt Freehand/Illustrator and Go Live/Dreamweaver.

    Freehand, Fireworks, and Go Live are Dead.

  • I don't think Fireworks is dead, I think it will become the next version of ImageReady. Web graphics/optimization is the only feature I know about in Fireworks, and ImageReady hasn't really been improved much in the last 5 years.

  • Having used both ImageReady and FireWorks, I sure hope to hell that FireWorks does not simply take the place of ImageReady. While maybe some of the optimization can be ported over to improve it in ImageReady, I /hate/ working with FireWorks.

  • Just a thought...maybe Microsoft will go against thier normal trend, turning the whole thing on its head and go for open non-proprietary standards-based formats, such as SVG and SMIL, and leave Adobomedia to closed-proprietary-based formats such as SWF or PDF. Don't get me wrong I am fan of all of the formats in the right places, so I would welcome Flash or Acrobat playing SVG/SMIL.

  • Jesse,



    I don't think you have a concrete understanding of Adobe's products. InDesign is not a web production tool at all. This is Adobe's product for static print media. In using Adobe products, one realizes that all of the power comes from the complete integration of the applications. Photoshop to Illustrator to InDesign to Acrobat, it is seamless. Adding Flash to this just creates more powerful suite.



    Acrobat is not dead, it is the most powerful way to present media the way it is supposed to look. What else can do this?



    My thoughts on the Adobe, Macromedia deal is that is is a way to add even richer content to not only the web, but static media as well. To me, this is an obvious evolution.



    Adobe needed flash. Plain and simple.

  • Jeff,



    I agree with you, and its something which was my initial opinion. I've read some pretty wild speculation, including John Dvorak's theories that Adobe is simply an edgy neurotic paranoid company who thinks Microsoft is out to get them (whaaaaaaaat?).



    I was actuallu really happy when I heard about the acquisition (and shocked as well). But I think it will be a really good thing for the rest of us.



    Adobe and Flash (and Dreamweaver, to some extent) makes perfect sense. Long live Adobe. or macrobe... :p

  • Jeff, I'm definately don't claim to be expert on Adobe's products. I do however, know a lot of designers that use InDesign together with GoLive to produce web content. Perhaps GoLive would have made a better choice of product for the comparison, though I think most people got the point.



    As I said in my post, it is pretty obvious that Adobe wanted Flash above all other things. However, their acquisition of Macromedia is not that simple. Adobe is not going to buy Macromedia, take Flash, and flush all of Macromedia's non-flash products and developers down the drain. The acquisition is definately going to bring Adobe into new markets and new places in the enterprise. Yes, Flash is going to be one of the vehicles for entry into these markets, but to say that Adobe bought Macromedia just so that they could use Flash in their products is an obsurd claim, since they don't have to spend 4 billion dollars to integrate Flash into their products when the file format specifications are available for free to anyone who wants them and there are plenty of Flash content SDK's out there for quite a bit less than 4 billion dollars.

  • I am a Multimedia student who uses illustrator to create content for flash. I am expecting Adobe to create a seamless integration between illustrator drawing tools and flash, is this farfetched?

    -Martin K

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