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The Adobe-Macromedia powerhouse

Back in April of 2005, Adobe Systems announced plans to acquire Macromedia in a stock deal worth more than $3 billion. This merger sparks the beginning of what promises to be a monstrously powerful company in the web industry. Adobe is pledging to offer complete compatibility between Adobe and Macromedia products, giving more power at the hands of web developers than ever before.

Bruce Chizen, Adobe's Chief Executive Officer, offers his defense of this merger: "Customers are calling for integrated software solutions that enable them to create, manage and deliver a wide range of compelling content and applications -- from documents and images to audio and video. By combining our powerful development, authoring and collaboration software -- along with the complementary functionality of PDF and Flash -- Adobe has the opportunity to bring this vision to life with an industry-defining technology platform."

Mike Chambers, Flash Platform Developer Relations at Macromedia, urges the point that this merger is not yet official, as it must withstand government regulations and stockholder approval. Chambers promises to continue Macromedia's development of emerging technologies, like 8ball, and voices Macromedia's commitment to making this transition as smooth as possible.

Once official, what does this mean to us, as web developers? It means we will soon have a solid collection of efficient and integrated web authoring tools at our disposal. It represents a fusion of web technologies never seen before in the web industry.

For those unfamiliar with these companies, Adobe and Macromedia have spent years trying to outdo the other, strategically maneuvering for position in the web market. Adobe, maker of the extremely popular Photoshop software (among others), and Macromedia, maker of Dreamweaver (among others) were bitter rivals just months ago.

Of course, the merger of these two companies will undoubtedly spark antitrust and monopoly concerns - a topic we are not concerned with here. A more important topic to web developers, this merger is stunning - almost as if Microsoft had merged with Red Hat Linux. Two rivals, vying for the same demanding market, find a way ($$$) to join forces and combine their technologies.

Does this mean Adobe's vector-graphics based Illustrator program will overshadow Macromedia's Freehand software? Will Flash get integrated into Illustrator and/or Photoshop? Will Macromedia's Dreamweaver software push Adobe's GoLive into oblivion? These are all interesting questions, and ones that I am eager to get answered.

Author: Steve
Date written: June, 2005