Wow – so Macromedia and Adobe are going to merge. This makes a lot of sense from their point of view, but I think it’s a pity – they’re both good companies in a similar space, with enough overlap to allow healthy competition but sufficient differences to allow them both to survive.
I fear a merger, if it happens, will not be such a good thing for the customer. There’s not enough other competition in this space. We’ll see..
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As a frequent and proficient user of both Adobe’s products (Photoshop in particular) and Macromedia’s (Flash, Dreamweaver), I can honestly say that I think this merger is a big mistake for the customer – but from the investor’s standpoint, it makes perfect sense.
If memory serves, an article on macromedia.com describing the buy-out would give Macromedia share-holders approximately $48 dollars (USD) per share of Macromedia stock owned. This is a great thing – especially when Macromedia stock was priced at $37 dollars that morning! As you can see, there’s a big profit to be made on each and every share.
But what about their customers? Having used a number of Adobe’s products, I can honestly say that I like Macromedia’s “stuff” better for web development purposes. The only products from Adobe that I honestly believe knock the socks off of Macromedia’s equivalents are Photoshop and Premiere Pro 1.5. I haven’t had a need to use any of their other programs, and I very much like Dreamweaver’s interface, as opposed to GoLive, which is (in my opinion) just plain terrible.
My prediction: This is the end of Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver users will need to switch to GoLive with the next release. Flash on the other hand I’m predicting will be somehow integrated with Photoshop (maybe a Photoshop “export to flash” feature) and Fireworks will be “assimilated” into ImageReady.
For the investors, this is a great move. For all us “normal” people, a dark cloud forms on the horizon.
Thanks Josh – yes, I agree with much of this. I, too, think Dreamweaver’s a great product and I hear a lot more talk about it than about GoLive, so I’d be surprised if it were killed off. My guess is that DW has the larger market share, though i have no evidence for that.
I haven’t used GoLive, so can’t comment on whether there’s any likelihood that they could gradually merge; I doubt it.
Adobe is used to such internal conficts with Pagemaker & InDesign, and they seem to be adopting the path of a slow and gentle persuasion of Pagemaker users that they might like to take advantage of an ‘upgrade’…