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Microsoft To Acquire Macromedia?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the rumours-swirling-around dept.

perly-king-69 writes "The Register is reporting that 'industry sources' say that Microsoft have Macromedia in their sights. Whilst it could just be holiday gossip, if they do pull it off it could have a significant impact on the cross-browser compatibility of Flash applications."

5 of 496 comments (clear)

  1. Re:No, that is not a fact by DrunkenPenguin · · Score: 3, Informative

    Didn't you know that you can have Quicktime in Linux? ..Windows media too. It's called MPlayer and it can be reached here!
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  2. Mozilla vs Flash by axxackall · · Score: 3, Informative
    Mozilla is the worst browser to run Flash plugins: it's crashing, it has problem wth sound, rendering and so on. Comparing to opera and MS IE. Besides, Flash works mostly on MS Windows and Mac OS. It's very crashy on Linux/x86. And you can forget about Linux on non-x86 platforms.

    However, Mozilla has much better (potentially in some future) vector presentation technology: SVG. It's better integrated to HTML/Javascript code around it. And it's really platform independent.

    I think that the day Microsoft buys Macromedia, Flash will dye for Mozilla and many Mozilla developers will switch to SVG. Which is much better than Flash.

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    Less is more !
  3. Re:Who do you want to own today? by Pope · · Score: 5, Informative
    it just seems shitty when a big guy buys up a brand or name then tries to pawn it off as their own.

    The way Macromind became Macromedia after they and Adobe split the Aldus software portfolio?

    The way Macromedia bought Flash from Futuresplash?

    Ask yourself whatever happened to Extreme 3D, SoundEdit and Xres...

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    It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
  4. Re:Folks this is a rumor by didlybom · · Score: 4, Informative

    Cringely wrote about it a week ago, in his InfoWorld column. Still a rumor though.

  5. EU Competition Commission by l-ascorbic · · Score: 3, Informative

    If this does turn out to be more than the regular rumour-mongering, it's worth remembering that even if a merger isn't blocked by US authorities, the European Union Competition Commission has shown itself more than willing to block deals like this that are so obviously anti-competitive. And yes, they do have jurisidiction over the deal, because both companies do business and have subsidiaries in Europe.