[MW Forums]

Adobe Systems Inc. has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Macromedia Inc. for US$3.4 billion in stock, the company said Monday. more

[veggiedude]

I am so disgusted at the news. Does Adobe have any serious competition now?

[username]

Apple should buy Adobe!
I hope/Fireworks/Dreamweaver/Contribute will be kept alive... but I guess it's they're history soon. FreeHand is dead. For sure.

[pcmeissner]

I agree. I love adobe products, but announcments like this can't be good for the consumer. Bye bye Quark with it's feeble page layout/web page software. Adobe just became a 800 lb. gorilla x2.

[Argent]

Freehand, gone. Fireworks, gone. I suspect that Dreamweaver will be integrated with GoLive, Adobe will probably keep Contribute around, Flash and Director are obviously going to stick around.
Adobe Flash just sounds wrong (and scary) doesn't it?

[Nobody]

Don't be so sure about the 800 pound gorilla. Adobe just paid a whopping price for Macromedia. Macromedia shares cannot possibly be worth 69% of the value of Adobe's shares. Macromedia was only able to sell itself at such a premium because Adobe had no other choice for serious growth, and Macromedia knew it. Adobe will be digging itself out of this whole for a long time. I suspect Adobe will find itself the target of a purchase buy Microsoft or Apple in the not-to-distant future--which may be another reason Adobe did this: to prevent Apple or Microsoft from buying Adobe and competing directly with them on their front door.

[Nobody]

I wonder if Adobe was getting increasingly nervous about the fit and finish (and overwhelming popularity) of Apple software and decided the risk that Apple might pick up Macromedia itself was just too much to handle? Apple certainly had the black ink handy for that purchase, stock be damned.
And Dreamweaver integrated into GoLive? Dream on! :-) I bet only Flash and Director survive amongst the key products.

[Joe_Mac_User]

It seems to be Adobe's biggest competition now is Apple itself. Apple already blew them out of the water in movie editing, Pages may take on the lower end of DTP, iPhoto 5's editing has gotten pretty powerful and Tiger will possibly make it more so. Motion may kill After Effects, too.
There are others. Stone Design has a very good page layout app (Create), there's Freeway for web design from Softpress, and more. Both of these apps come from smaller companies that don't have the marketing juggernaut Adobe has though.
My biggest problem with Adobe has been their fiddly support of the Mac market as of late (see what Steve Jobs said about them in his recent Fortune interview about why Apple developed iMovie/FCP).
Still, I'm sad to see the two major Aldus apps finally gone (PageMaker and Freehand, with Presentation long gone). They helped change the world.

[UFOGoldorak]

I am feeling so much anger inside this morning!! THIS SUCKS. The best page layout app is gone. Freehand is gone!!!!! I hope they incorporate most of its features into illustrator or keep it its own entity. I'm a desinger/prepress and freehand just did the job so easily and flawlessly and stayed out the way. Freehand MX got a bit clunky but still better than illustrator for prepress operations. Don't get me wrong I love illustrator. Infact when a job requires extensive design needs its all done in illustrator but all was imported into freehand for final layout and film or plate separation. THIS SUCKS!!!!! The ability to set guides by the hundreds with keyboard input or the fact that clippings inside of clipping mask are infact clipped and not just visiually hidden etc..... /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

[mcaswell]

Perhaps I don't fully understand antitrust regulations, but I don't see how this merger could be approved by the gov't... Dreamweaver and GoLive are THE major web design apps (at least on the Mac... I guess PC users have Frontpage too). I was under the impression that this kind of situation (one big company buying it's only real competition) is exactly what the law is supposed to prevent.
--Mike

[melgross]

This isn't an anti-trust situation. It isn't based on a program by program marketshare.
With an OS it's different.
I remember years ago when Symantic bought Central Point. I told Symantics Chairman that I was surprised that anti-trust didn't review the case as there were no other large comperitors at the time, and he said that he was surprised as well.
I did think that Macromedia was a good fit to Apple, but Jobs is cheap.
Macromedia let Freehand slide. It hasn't been competitive for years.

[MacGod]

Why assume that DreamWeaver, Freehand etc are going to disappear completely? I would expect that Adobe intends to combine Illustrator's and Freehand's features into one, and ditto for GoLive-DreamWeaver.
The downside of this is the (significant) risk that the products will stagnate sooner or later. However, Adobe wants to keep people buying upgrades. To this, they need to add new features, improve interfaces etc. While I have no doubt this process will be slower without the competition that Macromedia provides, I expect we'll see many of these apps merge into an upgraded best-of-both-worlds upgrade first. Then it'll stagnate at bit, I'm sure.
I'm not saying this is good (competition is required for continued innovation), but I just don't think we're likely to see Freehand and DreamWeaver killed outright. Both apps were arguably better than their Adobe-branded counterparts, and I don't think Adobe is boneheaded enough to spend $3.4B and just throw away some of the top-shelf intellectual property they're getting in the deal.

[shreader2]

I guess I won't be able to get tech support for my Macromedia products anymore.

[leapoffaith]

I can't see Adobe killing Dreamweaver. I would daresay that Dreamweaver is more widely used than GoLive. I'm basing this off of want ads for web designers; I've never seen anyone looking for a designer fluent in GoLive. Yeah, it's not the best criterion, but it's all I have right now other than personal observances, which support the Dreamweaver usage. The two more likely scenarios are rolling them together or killing GoLive.