As everyone well knows by now (especially in this blog sphere) Adobe and Macromedia announced today that Adobe is buying Macromedia in a $3.4 billion dollar stock deal. Now to most of you in the design and web development community this is probably no big deal and you won't even give this a second thought. Then there are others like myself, that this will scare the socks off you.

Why would this scare the socks of us? Well for one thing it has become customary in the United States corporate world that if your competition is doing well then just buy them out to eliminate your competition so they are no longer a threat. I sincerely hope this isn't the case but, even if it isn't the case you still have to overcome the merger of two diverse and different corporate cultures which this is a huge hurdle in and of itself.

Even if they can overcome the merger of two diverse corporate cultures you have to figure out how to merge two different visions and missions statements. This is the second part that scares me.

I'm probably not like most people in that the only product that Adobe makes that I like and think is good is Photoshop. I don't like Illustrator that much and would rather draw vector graphics in either Macromedia Fireworks or Macromedia Freehand. One of the reasons that like the Macromedia products better is because they have cleanest and simplest interfaces. I should clarify that Macromedia has the cleanest, coolest and simplest interface on Windows XP. On OS X macromedia's interface just falls apart and this has been one of my biggest frustrations in buying my first Mac not to long ago. It's just so frustrating that Macromedia didn't make their interface the same on their Windows XP versions and OS X versions. I'm just really scared that future upgrades of Macromedia's software will have its interface assimilated by Adobe or visa versa. Trying to be positive this could be a good thing and they could come up with something really great by combining the best of both interfaces. But I'm truly afraid that this won't be the case because usually what happens is the bigger company buying out the smaller company thinks their products are better because they are bigger and doesn't have anything to learn from the smaller company. So in this case this would mean that Adobe could end up thinking they are bigger and better and there for have nothing to learn from Macromedia.

I most certainly hope this isn't the case because I think that Adobe has a lot to learn from Macromedia. Adobe most certainly has a lot to learn about online animation and they can do a lot of learning by learning about Macromedia's flash.

The bottom line is that no one knows how this will bear out. So I guess for now I will just enjoy designing and developing with what I've got and hope for the best. I guess, I always have a choice to not upgrade to new versions when they come out but, how likely is that since I'm a sucker for new software in its new and shiny shrink wrapped package.