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View Full Version : microsoft buying adobe?

slam
10-08-2010, 02:28 PM
say it ain't so: http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN0721049120101007

apple probably shouldn't have been so mean to them...
paul
10-08-2010, 05:04 PM
I don't think they'd get it past the anti-trust regulators. It would leave Microsoft owning pretty much the whole commercial desktop software industry.

I wonder if Microsoft would pull the plug on Photoshop and Illustrator for the Mac?

As for Flash... Who cares. It's just for obnoxious banner ads and cheesy games anymore. It seems like pretty much everyone agrees that the next generation of HTML and CSS is going to replace it. And the rest of Adobe's products... Cold Fusion, Acrobat, Flex, AIR. All products that are slowly being obsoleted or never really took off to begin with. Makes one wonder how Microsoft would feel like they're getting their 15 billion dollars worth out of the deal.
slam
10-08-2010, 05:15 PM
one could argue that the commercial desktop software industry isn't king of the hill anymore, what with mobile and web apps starting to dominate, and apple owns that market right now. and i'm sure microsoft would still release mac versions of adobe software; they still release office for the mac.

i wonder if microsoft would ditch silverlight. but you're right, html5 seems to be the future. curious idea.
paul
10-11-2010, 07:30 PM
Dang, it's amazing how fast that rumor came and went. Seemed like everybody had moved on from this by the end of the day on Friday.

Anyway, I do think it would be near impossible to get the antitrust issues worked out. Look at Oracle and Sun. That deal was scrutinized like crazy, and neither company has anything resembling a monopoly on any market. And, those companies didn't even really compete.

In these times, Microsoft is the most widely recognized monopoly we have. And they do compete with Adobe in a lot of areas, like PDF vs XPS, AIR vs. Microsofts bunch of different software development frameworks, and Silverlight vs. Flash.

I guess, that withstanding, it didn't seem like a good idea to anyone. The articles I read all cited different work cultures and non-complimentary product lines as reasons it probably won't happen. Surprising, but I don't see a single news items about this, only one business day later.