LONDON (MarketWatch) — Adobe Systems on Monday, seeking to expand in interactive graphics applications for Web site developers and advertisers, announced an agreement to buy Macromedia in a stock-based deal valued at $3.4 billion. [CBS Marketwatch]
This completely changes the graphics world… at least from a competitive perspective! I wonder which overlapping products (GoLive vs Dreamweaver for example…) will continue to be developed following the acquisition. Adobe will now have the most complete software system to manage the creation, management and delivery of creative materials.
I’d bet quite a bit that Dreamweaver will be the flagship Professional tool and GoLive will fill the ‘Prosumer’ (God, I hate that word) niche. I don’t now too many designers that use GoLive.
Obviously, Flash will completely dominate Adobe’s lame SVG implementation, which will probably end up on the dung heap.
I’m interested to see what will happen to Fireworks. Early Photoshop functionality was buggy for creating animated GIFs, but apparently they have gotten much better and lots of people have switched.