Adobe and Macromedia Agree on Acquisition

Adobe will be acquiring Macromedia by Q4 2005 if nothing goes wrong – and currently there’s no reason to think something will go wrong.

The FAQ PDF has answers to many questions:

• This will not be a merger, this is an  acquisition. Adobe is acquiring Macromedia for about $3.4 billon (in stock).
• Macromedia will not be a stand alone business unit, the brand Macromedia will not be used. The name Macromedia will be history.
• Some products will stay, some will go. No details, but the acqusition will not affect planned product releases.
• Who proposed this acqusition? No answer.

The Corporate Facts PDF states that Adobe customers are ‘creative professionals‘ while Macromedia Customers are mere ‘web and application developers‘. Also it understates the Flash player somewhat. (Of course, at this point Adobe cannot admit some things openly).

Fireworks and Freehand are prime candidates to go first, because they directly compete with Adobe products. It seems reasonable to think DreamWeaver will stay, and GoLive will go dead.

Definitely Flash will stay as Adobe Flash, but I’m not sure if Adobe is wise enough to see the value of Flash Paper; PDF is a failure for what Flash Paper provides -though they mention ‘about the complementary functionality of PDF and Flash’.

There are a lot of unknowns, and they will stay so until the acqusition is completed. Until then, both companies will operate as separate companies…

This was clearly the news of the day…