Why Did Adobe Buy Macromedia?

option8 writes "According to John Dvorak the reasoning behind Adobe's recent (and to many, surprising) purchase of Macromedia for $3.4 billion is that Adobe was afraid Microsoft was going to do it first. An interesting look at the thinking and attitude of Adobe from someone who's been following them for a long time. From TFA: "So, mostly out of fear, Adobe buys its main competitor and now must shoehorn the company into its unfortunate not-invented-here corporate culture. (This aspect of Adobe is another story in itself.)""

Comments

Re:Just a Rant

[Flywheels of Fire]

Assertion 1: The only difference is that with Adobe, nobody else is actually after the guitar. Adobe only thinks they are.
Justification: Not forthcoming

Assertion 2:Its paranoia stems from Microsoft.
Justification: Not forthcoming

Assertion 3:And apparently this paranoia permeates the corporate culture.
It's NOT apparent

Assertion 4:So, mostly out of fear, Adobe buys its main competitor and now must shoehorn the company into its unfortunate not-invented-here corporate culture. (This aspect of Adobe is another story in itself.)
Pray, I would like to here this other story

Assertion 5:But easily absorbing Macromedia is another story, especially since a lot of ill-will was generated by a lawsuit between them a few years ago.
Yeah it is another more interesting story that Dvorak's rant. But skills of even storytelling are beyond Dvorak.

Assertion 6:It's assumed that Adobe will redesign the interfaces of key Macromedia products to match its own and then discard most of the rest of Macromedia, much like the guitar in "Blow-Up."
Assumed only by Dvorak

Assertion 7:Was it worth $3.4 billion? I doubt it.
And I doubt Dvorak

Three point four BILLION. . ???

[Fantastic Lad]

Is it just me, or is that a ridiculously sum of money for Adobe to be able to come up with? We're talking about a company which sells a limited line of CD Roms and badly written computer manuals!

I seem to recall during the crazy buy-out race in the eighties and nineties, that purchase figures were rarely that huge. Viacom buying Blockbuster, (or was it the other way around?) and giant media corps never dealt in that kind of price range!

Anybody who tells me Adobe products aren't insanely over-priced is nuts. Pirating is clearly not a problem to Adobe's bottom line! Sheesh.

Real companies which build physical items need significant price tags to keep their factories working. Software, by contrast, is infinitely reproducible for pennies. Selling a $10 package (Box, disk, manual), for $800-$1,200 per unit is morally bankrupt!

3.4 BILLION? I mean. . , come on! Not to mention, it's only been quite recently that their products didn't crap out all the time. --In the print bureaus I've dealt with, they called it "Ragemaker" because the layout package had so many bugs.

3.4 BILLION???

Wow. Just, Wow.

-FL

What is that Dvorack character smoking?

[antispam_ben]

I don't want any, it obviously makes you stupid.

From TFPCmagA you linked to:

On the PC side of the fence, no Z-80 maker survived even the transition to the 8080.

I suspect he meant 8086 instead of 8080, as that's the only way the statement would make any sense whatsoever.

The last time I read DVORAK regularly, his columns were full of NAMES of people in the industry, as well as other RANDOM words in the text made BOLD. It was quite STRANGE reading.