Adobe Snarfs Macromedia in 3.4 Bn Deal

By Brice Dunwoodie | Published Apr 18, 2005

Good golly. Macromedia's arch rival, Adobe Systems Inc., has swallowed dear old MACR en-mass today ….the Canadian glass ceiling shatters and keep your eyes open for the intersection of Adobe's Document Services and MACR's fledgling Web Publishing System.

The acquisition must still be approved by both companies stock holders but if all goes well the deal should be finalized in the fall of this year.

The general sense is that Flash with 80-90% web market penetration and a growing base in the mobile space was the basis of the deal. Here are a few additional comments from the peanut gallery, while we're at it:

Bye bye Go-live!

Bye bye ColdFusion

Bye bye JRun

Bye bye Freehand

Bye bye Central

Hello integrated web publishing services

Hopefully this is good news for Flex and Rich UI

Hey does this mean Dreamweaver unbloat and stabilize one day?

Macromedia stockholders will receive 0.69 shares of Adobe common stock for every share of their Macromedia common stock. The deal values Macromedia at 25 percent more than Friday's closing price, or according to Bloomberg, 43.8 times operating profit and 7.5 times sales revenues.

Macromedia's recently promoted CEO Stephen Elop will join Adobe as president of, um, worldwide field operations. The fate of Macromedia's 1500 employees has not been discussed in detail.

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