PLAYING CHESS WITH MICROSOFT
Tech Columnist Robert X. Cringely has an interesting article titled "Flash in the pan", discussing the Adobe Macromedia merger. Specifically, he posits that the combined company is better positioned for a coming Microsoft attack on Adobe's Acrobat franchise, and that one of the gems in the $3.4 billion acquisition for Adobe is Flash, particularly in how it could be used by the combined company. He notes:
Let's say Adobe/Macromedia had some little bit of code - a VoIP client, for example -- they wanted to bring to market. Just make it part of the next version of Flash.
Over the course of a few months and practically without effort, that little program would be installed and ready to go in hundreds of millions of computers. Then all Adobe would have to do is to announce it and the service could be up and running practically overnight.
That's the kind of market clout that not even Microsoft has. And that's what makes Macromedia a bargain for Adobe even at $3.4 billion.
I do think this is a stretch even as Cringely acknowledges this as strictly hypothetical. Even though Flash may "the most downloaded" program of all time, and updates automatically on platforms ranging from PCs to cellphones, I do think Adobe/Macromedia would be seriously risking the trust that customers and corporations put in Flash if they started to add other applications programs in the Flash installation package.
Microsoft does have its work cut out competing with Adobe's Acrobat with it's upcoming Metro document printing program due out with Longhorn, the next version of the Windows operating system. For more on Metro and its feature, see this article from Datamation discussing its features and competitive profile with Acrobat.
As Cringely observes,
Conventional wisdom says that Adobe needs this acquisition to bulk-up for the inevitable conflict to come with Microsoft. Conventional wisdom is occasionally wrong, however.
I'm not saying that the acquisition makes no sense. Quite the contrary, I support it. But the lack of competition from Microsoft in Adobe's traditional graphics markets comes down primarily to Bill Gates realizing that Microsoft simply hasn't been in a position to compete with Adobe on a technology-for-technology basis.
Gates tried to undercut Adobe's PostScript with Microsoft's TrueType fonts back in the late 1980s and was taken to the woodshed by Adobe. The professional graphics market wasn't willing to give Microsoft the three tries it generally needs to get something right.
Even though Adobe has constantly improved Acrobat and done a almost as good a job getting global distribution for the free reader as Macromedia has with Flash, I do think there is need for improvement. More competition is always good, even if the monopoly buster-to-be is Microsoft. It'll be interesting to watch this game to checkmate.
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