Adobe Buys Macromedia

What!?!?? WHHHAATTT? Adobe to buy Macromedia?

Okay, now that I've had at least thirty minutes or so to jam my eyes back in their sockets, a few quick thoughts on this. First, and I'm honestly not trying to be overly dramatic, but for me this is the end of an era. Macromedia was the younger, more tech-savvy upstart eating into Adobe's presence during the dot-com days. They saw the opportunities Adobe did not -- software for the creation of rich media and robust web development tools, and the opportunities of new media. Macromedia was so hot during the dot com days, it appeared as though they could eventually overtake Adobe. They understood the non-static web and interactivity, and helped feed that excitement with groundbreaking products.

But all that changed with the bubble burst. And come to think of it, perhaps the writing was always on the wall. Since the bust of early 2000 I have long suspected there were internal problems at Macromedia. It seemed to take considerable wind out of their sails as the company tried anything and everything to further leverage Flash into high-priced spin-off products (Flex, Flash Communication Server) or apps that have all but disappeared (Central), but the excitement and energy never seemed to fully return. The communities around ColdFusion and Flash held together, thanks in part to very open communication between Macromedia employees and outside developers, but since early 2000 the company has felt adrift and schizophrenic. And perhaps today is why.

Then of course there are Macromedia's other products -- ColdFusion, Dreamweaver, Freehand, Fireworks -- what will come of those? Is Adobe, a company that doesn't produce a programming language or product with a real API, the right company to manage ColdFusion? Or ActionScript? Will Dreamweaver be re-branded GoLive? Will (to borrow a snarky but funny post from a forum thread I read) Illustrator and Freehand be combined as Frustrator?

And perhaps my viewpoint (as a Flash developer) is myopic, but it wouldn't surprise me if this whole buyout was about Flash. What else would Adobe really want? ColdFusion scripting in Photoshop? Freehand transparency in Illustrator? The product that has the least overlap and broadest leverage going forward is Flash -- especially in the mobile market. Adobe tried to kill Flash years ago with LiveMotion, which never got off the ground, and instead put all their eggs into SVG.

Which brings me to my next point -- what will become of the whole SVG versus SWF debate? Will Flash eventually publish SVG instead of a proprietary plug-in based format? Will Microsoft get on board and offer native SVG support in IE like Mozilla? If so, then there wouldn't be a need for plug-ins anymore and any browser or device with SVG could render Flash as a native, standards compliant object.

But let's look at another tangent -- the consumer marketplace. If this buyout does indeed happen, web developers will have to buy and use products by Adobe, or...Corel? Apple? Outside of Adobe, what would you use? Gimp? PaintShop? I'd obviously use BBEdit / Textmate for text editing, but everything else would (theoretically) be produced by one company -- Adobe, Adobe, Adobe.

I'm rambling somewhat, but my head is spinning and I had to get this out into words. In the end, all I can say is this -- at least it wasn't Microsoft.