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Adobe Buys Macromedia for $3.4B

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the thats-a-whole-lotta-bread dept.

Kobayashi Maru writes "A press release from Adobe announces that they will buy Macromedia for approximately $3.4 billion. The new company will be called Adobe Systems, Inc."

7 of 937 comments (clear)

  1. CNET coverage by balster+neb · · Score: 5, Informative

    Coverage from CNET news.com.com, from Reuters.

  2. No more lawsuits huh by null+etc. · · Score: 5, Informative
    A few years ago, Adobe sued Macromedia for infringing upon a patent by which Adobe displayed "GUI elements" in a certain dockable, palette-oriented fashion. Macromedia had to withdraw those features from its product to comply.

    Now, we're sure to see Flash get an improved user interface. I guess this is a case where Adobe's patent really helped it innovate.

  3. Re:Damn... by ccharles · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's nowhere near as powerful (yet), but try out Nvu. It's meant to be a Dreamweaver clone, and it's pretty decent.

  4. Re:this is bad news! by Makzu · · Score: 5, Informative

    From a we-can't-have-any-monopolies point of view, it is rather bad news. However, from a product suite POV, it's probably a good thing.

    Look at it this way: Dreamweaver is considered to be about the best commercial HTML editor out there. And Flash is totally ubiquitous. However, Fireworks and Freehand are generally no-so-great (in comparison to Adobe's stuff). Photoshop and Illustrator are the de facto standards, and are great at what they do, yet Adobe's LiveMotion and GoLive are both pretty godawful.

    Now that the two companies are one, you can be damn sure that you'll be able to get a package deal with Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver all in one box, and they'll be as nicely integrated as Studio MX currently is. As someone who uses these on a regular basis, I'd consider that to be a pretty good thing.

    Now, if only we could get Linux versions of these programs...

  5. Re:I for one... by jackbird · · Score: 5, Informative
    From the FAQ:

    What happens to the Macromedia brand?

    Adobe recognizes the strong equity of the Macromedia brand. That said, it makes great business sense for a company the size of the combined company to align behind a single corporate brand. Over time, Macromedia products will transition to the Adobe brand. Adobe expects to keep and continue investing in key Macromedia product brands.

    Also of interest:

    Do you expect to integrate the FlashPlayer and the Adobe Reader?

    The complementary functionality of FlashPlayer and Adobe Reader will enable the deployment of a more robust cross-media, rich-client technology platform. The combined company will continue to be committed to the needs of both the FlashPlayer and Adobe Reader users.

  6. Slow Acrobat Reader Fix by Mister+Transistor · · Score: 5, Informative

    Try this, 'tis most excellent! Makes Reader load in 1/2 sec or so, terminates quickly, and hardly ever crashes. It seems it's all those damn stupid bloated plugins causing the problems. To fix:

    1. Install Adobe Reader 6.0 and notice where it is installed.
    2. Navigate to that folder in Explorer, locate the plug_ins subfolder and rename this folder to plug_ins_disabled.
    3. Create a new plug_ins folder.
    4. Move the files EWH32.api, printme.api and search.api from plug_ins_disabled to plug_ins.

    Try it, you'll like it!

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  7. Re:I'm scared. :( by slapout · · Score: 5, Informative

    According to the PDFReader download.com link:

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