It looks like adobe is positioning itself to become the second most hated software company.they just bought out their only real rival in the graphics design software sector.. http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050418/ap_on_bi_ge/adobe_macromedia
Adobe is not at all like Microsoft and Oracle...it has good Help and Tech service and its experience with exclusive professional software; i.e., Photoshop and Illustrator, as well as Acrobat, makes it THE software company of the future...Macromedia is a good fit with Adobe...since Macromedia had crappy Tech Support, this is good news for multimedia developers and the Mac communnity, as well as the PC/Wintel crowd.
I agree Adobe currently is a great company.Its just you never know with mergers, one thing that nearly always go to pot in these deals is customer service, not saying Adobe will initially act like asses.. but what may be the product of handling the merger may end up in to a cocky attitude of "were the only guys in town" .It happens, hopefully this merger wont take on that aura.
the main difference between Adobe and MS is that MS OWNS the platform basically. If you want a PC, and you want a large amount of third party as well as built-in SW for it, you have little choice, Windows is the only real option, especially if you have a need to network the systems together. Oracle, they just don't have any real competition in large scale DB products. Adobe is SW that installs on several platforms and provides a need that the OS (ie MS) doesn't have. They have little choice but to have good support because other products are there to replace them if they slip up, including MS products which integrate in with Windows. This is a good merger.
Computer Associates has to be in the top five for software companies, right? In fact, I thought that they were number two to Microsoft a few years ago.
I'm not worried. Adobe's flagship products are Photoshop and Acrobat writer, thick client, desktop applications. Macromedia's flagship products are Flash and Dreamweaver, tools used for web sites and web applications. Thus, they are not really direct competitors. The main thing, however, they have in common is that their products are fully cross platform - they all run on Windows, Mac, Unix, Linux, BSD, and others. The combination should be pretty strong, and if anything Microsoft should be worried because a strong supplier a good cross platform products reduces the relevence of the MS Windows monopoly. All that said, I'm not a fan of mergers or take-overs. The end result usually sucks for both employees and customers. CEOs, board members, and many share holders always benefit. But customers and employees always get screwed, at least in the short term.