Well, this is interesting. The New York Times caught wind of a special and secret meeting between Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer and Adobe’s frontman Shantanu Narayen. They claim the entire talk was dedicated to the fight against Apple, and one of the options discussed was… Microsoft acquiring Adobe.
As most of you will know, Apple isn’t particularly friendly towards Adobe. Adobe has indeed neglected to deliver quality software, but of course, that’s not something Apple isn’t guilty of. In any case, Adobe’s Flash is banned from Apple’s mobile devices, and obviously, that doesn’t sit well with Adobe.
So, this is a topic of discussion among not only Adobe and Google, but also Adobe and Microsoft. The New York Times caught wind of a secret meeting between Steve Ballmer and Shantanu Narayen, Adobe’s CEO. Apple was the focus of the talks between the two companies.
Not only did the two CEOs discuss possible partnerships, but they also took it to the next level by discussing a possible acquisition of Adobe by Microsoft. In the past, Ballmer was afraid to perform such an acquisition due to antitrust concerns, but the rise of Google and Apple as fierce and formidable competitors has renewed Microsoft’s interest in Adobe.
It would be a sight to behold indeed. If such a deal went down, it would mean that Microsoft would supply the Mac platform with a hefty share of its most important software – Office as well as Photoshop and related products. It would also spell disaster for the Linux version of the Flash Player – which already is kind of a disaster as it is.
Both Microsoft and Adobe declined to talk about the meeting. “Adobe and Microsoft share millions of customers around the world and the CEOs of the two companies do meet from time to time,” an Adobe spokesperson stated, “However, we do not publicly comment on the timing or topics of their private meetings.” Microsoft didn’t comment at all.
it’s an unprecedented rumor. The only strategic value for MS acquiring adobe would be to kill flash in favor of silver light. but then MS is the paladin of Apple in the holy war that Jobs started…
All in all, while there are lots of reasons MS ‘could’ buy Adobe none of them are plausible enough to justify it… a rumor, nothing more.
I would have to agree. Adobe has little to offer MS right now, other then the opportunity to kill flash.
Dominance of the creative market is ‘not much’? Imagine either Microsoft, or Apple, buying Adobe and killing support for the other platform.
I wish either of them would hurry up and buy Adobe, there’s no way their software could get any worse!
A lot of adobes products, while admittedly unnecessarily bloated, are actually quite good. I wouldn’t want EITHER MS or Apple buying them, Adobe runs the business well and their cross platform support is good. either major OS vendor buying them would surely leverage the purchase to gain an edge and likely kill off the product on the other platform, or just make it suck more and get updates less, you know the usual…
Let’s all pray for Oracle to buy Adobe!
*shot gun to face sound*
Each page you go through on this site, just keep saying to yourself $1800, $1800, $1800… http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/
Well, some years ago, I was in one of those endless PS vs GIMP argument, my point being that its feature set is good enough for most use and that its UI is much more well-thought on many points of view.
Before we started arguing about the feature set, the answer he gave to my gripes about the UI could be translated as this :
“Novice users have a natural tendency to find Adobe’s UIs obscure, that’s because they don’t understand them. Once you’re used to them, you understand how every single detail of them is well-tought, allowing efficient operation all the time”
I wonder what he would say about these ones… (myself I had some other examples at the time, which were rather design horrors than bugs)
Edited 2010-10-08 05:48 UTC
I like how in CS4, you can’t choose Updates from the help menu until you’ve opened an image first. That’s really well thought out.
I also like how on Windows 7, the updater doesn’t work at all because it doesn’t run itself as administrator, and I had to go set that option to get it to work — *and* then how that means that you can no longer use the Updates menu to launch the updater, until you set Photoshop itself to run as administrator.
That’s really well thought out.
Hum… Maybe it needs a sample image for live regression testing ? =p
Well, I would be more kind with them about this one. Windows lacks a centralized update system (like Microsoft Update or most Unices updaters), so Adobe had to create their own, which was obviously as quirky as update in application software can get. It’s not the same as voluntarily ditching native UI widgets instead of using, say, a cross-platform wrapper like QT.
I could make a similar blog for all the mishaps in Office:Mac. There are errors in there I still can’t believe (except when I realize it’s from the same company that makes Windows… right it makes sense again). In just a few weeks of working with Office:Mac, I realized I should have gone for OpenOffice or iWork…
There are lots of bugs in Office Windows as well, what is your point ?
I’m trying to think of what you could be talking about, and can’t figure it out for the life of me. If anything, it might be Photoshop, but even if you counted Photoshop as a good product, it’d still be expensive for Microsoft to buy a company of Adobe’s size for just that.
don’t forget about Adobe’s patent portfolio. Flash holds A LOT of patents that MS could leverage with Silver Light. Or at least it wouldn’t be at risk of patent infringment due to reinventing the wheel, so to speak.
Though it could certainly use some improvement, Lightroom 3 is actually very good, and there’s only one program in it’s class that’s even competitive.
However, my favorite Adobe program is Acrobat Reader version 5.0. 5.0 absolutely flies on my modern systems, and can still open most PDFs.
Given Microsoft’s history of bloatware, they’d probably be a good match for each other.
May be you know what can compete with Adobe inDesign at present?
killing flash wouldn’t make microsoft moonlight a favorite for Linux users and google wouldn’t switch to silverlight on youtube
Edited 2010-10-07 21:58 UTC
Agreed. Killing Flash would simply accelerate the rise to prominence of standards for rich content, namely HMTL5/CSS/Fast ECMAscript/SVG.
YouTube would simly switch to HTML5/WebM, offer a WebM code for IE9 users to install, and advise other IE users to install either Chrome or maybe even Firefox/Opera.
YouTube already has encoded to WebM over one million of its most popular videos.
How are a specification released to promote a proprietary video format, a well-abused document layout specification, a scripting language designed begrudgingly by committee whose sole notable trait has been its Esperantoesque tendancy to create dozens of mutually incompatible subsets, and a dead vector graphic format, in any way a suitable replacement for a format that allows arbitrary code to be executed in a sandbox?
It’d make more sense to call Java or Silverlight a “standard for rich content,” although both Java and Silverlight are more “rich content” than “standard.”
Firefox 4, Google Chrome and even IE9 all include a quite reasonable implementation of GPU-accelerated HMTL5/CSS/Fast ECMAscript/Canvas/SVG. It doesn’t require a plugin. Adobe’s tools for creating “rich content” for Flash on websites can also create HMTL5/CSS/Fast ECMAscript/Canvas/SVG output. Enjoy.
BTW: A “standard” is a format or protocol for interoperability between different suppliers. It is not a popularity contest. Silverlight doesn’t qualify.
Edited 2010-10-08 00:52 UTC
They’re both awful and need to die.
Hmmm considering what they are doing with Yahoo!, I won’t be surprised.
As said in twitter :
Microsoft+Adobe=Microbe
Adsoft.
Picking names from Adobe past you can also have
Micromedia
I personally use Photoshop and Lightroom all the time on my Mac and would be very sad if a Microsoft acquisition threatened the future of the Mac versions of those products. I don’t think its likely.
What’s interesting though is firstly it shows how anxious, threatened and frankly desperate both companies feel about the growth of Apple. Adobe really should have been nicer to Apple and Mac users back when it would have been a kindness, as it was we felt often let down by them just when the Mac’s fortunes were at a low ebb. Lots of Mac users and plenty of people at Apple have long memories.
Second, no one thinks such a move would kill Apple or even stop it growing. A few years back it might have done. How times change.
“Both” companies?
Apple is no threat to Microsoft. The two companies work together at the very highest levels. They don’t compete – they work around each other, and have been doing so for well over a decade.
Adobe is the one who’s scared here. If Microsoft ends up buying Adobe, Apple will be a very happy company, since it would give them great influence (via their collaboration with Microsoft) over some of the Mac’s most popular programs.
After annoying us by taking away the amd64 version of flash for a while I wasn’t too happy but the latest release is probably the best flash I’ve used on Linux.
I guess Micro-dobe could always abandon mac and focus on Linux?….. hahahaha.
The world’s #1 and #2 software companies merging; I have a hard time believing this would get antitrust approval.
Adobe doesn’t come even close to being the second largest software company, no matter what angle you look from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_global_software_co…
I’m wondering if all he read was the headline, and misunderstood it as *Apple* and Microsoft merging. Not that Apple are the second-largest software company either, but it makes more sense than Adobe…
That’s how I originally read it. I was confused at first. Didn’t even catch Adobe in there.
Edited 2010-10-08 02:01 UTC
Apple is at least the second biggest software company if not the largest. The only reason they might not be the biggest software company is because they do make a lot of hardware.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/technology/27apple.html
The “world” and “the perception from your parent’s basement” are not necessarily correlated.
Adobe is not even among the top 10 software companies in the world.
FTA:
I’m not sure why the Linux version of the Flash player can be considered a disaster:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/205575/adobe_unleashes_64bit_beta_fl…
This plugin works just as well on Linux systems as it does anywhere else. It is exactly the same version.
Some Linux browsers don’t even require a Flash plugin:
http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/05/new-chrome-beta-gets-a-huge-speed-…
If Microsoft acquires Adobe and pulls the Linux version of the Flash plugin, there are other options for Linux where it may gain an open source Flash player with hardware acceleration:
http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26235
I’m really struggling to see any problem for Linux here.
Probably what is disastrous is the performance of the flash experience on Linux.
Solutions are starting to appear which use GPU hardware shaders and which can implement LLVM-based Actionscript 3.0.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightspark
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODY0Ng
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODM5Ng
Being a plugin, Lightspark is not as good a solution for rich content as the GPU-accelerated HTML5/ECMAscript/SVG/CSS/Canvas W3C standards, I grant you, but it performs pretty much as well as your hardware itself can.
Edited 2010-10-08 01:10 UTC
No it doesn’t. There are a bunch of overlay ad display issues with the linux client. However where it counts (i guess), performance, it does a bit better than the OSX client though not by much. Either way Flash sucks on anything other than Windows.
Are you talking about Adobe’s Flash plugin? Adobe’s Flash plugin software for Linux doesn’t use GPU hardware acceleration directly, although AFAIK it does call system libraries which can themselves use the GPU.
In any event, if performance of Flash is an issue for you on Linux, alternative software is becoming available:
http://www.osnews.com/permalink?444454
Edited 2010-10-08 03:27 UTC
I think this is desperation on the part of two companies who have failed to come up with anything really innovative in the last decade, are being carried through mostly by momentum and have both missed the boat on where technology is heading. Adobe milked Postscript in the 80s, Photoshop in the 90s and is trying the same with Flash. Microsoft missed the internet “fad” and has been trying to catch up ever since. We get reheated versions of Office every few years that add bells and whistles, but little else. Same with Adobe products. They do just enough to keep the upgrade cycle moving so the cash cow gives a little more milk. Even Win7 is missing many of the major features that were supposed to be in Vista.
Both have flopped when it’s come to mobile (we’ll see how well WinMo 7 does, but I’m not holding my breath). They didn’t see the signs and missed out. Now they’re trying to regain their lost glory. Neither one of them can stand the fact that there’s a market that exists where they aren’t the dominant player. Maybe they should merge, they can sink together.
Because this morning I just tried out Gnash again (this time it works for me), and so I uninstalled the Adobe Flash plugin
Lucky day!
There is also Lightspark for those brave enough:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightspark
It uses OpenGL GPU shaders (GLSL). It is still Beta software, so beware.
Adobe + Microsoft would mean cheaper Adobe products for consumers and developers, which would ultimately mean more widespread adoption of Adobe technologies.
Microsoft could really use Adobe’s catalog of multimedia software and Adobe could really use Microsoft’s capital to help make their products more mainstream.
Lower prices? Try lower quality too. And thousands upon thousands of patches “security” patches.
Thom, why do I get the feeling you have trouble making friends will all that negativity you spread into this world, especially via OSnews. Your ‘articles’ keep surprising me, but what surprises me more is that Eugenia isn’t preventing you from completely destroying the integrity of this site.
Most of this article was good, but like many of the articles you write, you just have to give out a blow to one of the parties involved in the article. In this article it’s Flash for Linux, which in your opinion is a “disaster”. Please keep that opinion for a personal blog, and maybe secure it with a very strong password that nobody will ever crack. Or at least not in a lifetime.
People like you tend to make it worse for everyone, in that you voice your opinion as if it is everyone’s. You’re not going to get the result you want this way.
What you need to keep in proper context is that OSNews is a multi-person personal blog, and that’s what you can expect: all the benefits and downfalls of that, respectively, and not necessarily the news that’s not rehashed.
Are there _any_ evidence that they talked about a merger?? Does it even make sense? Adobe would cost Microsoft more than one third of their cash reserves, would it really be worth it???
My own guess would be that Microsoft wants Silverlight support in future Adobe products. After all, they already support HTML5.
MS doesn’t like how Flash is filled with holes. They’re trying to bolt down Windows while Flash holds a door open. Buying Adobe to get rid of Flash doesn’t make sense. It would be much cheaper to help Adobe secure the damn thing.
If anything Adobe wants protection from Apple. Adobe might fear being taken over by Apple since a big part of the company would be destroyed.
But I bet the meeting was just about getting back at Apple. Jobs should have quietly dropped Flash support instead of going on a tirade. The Adobe CEO is probably plotting revenge.
I think he did. Then it got blown out of all proportion.
Meanwhile I don’t know anyone who really misses it on their iPhone, and no other smartphone has done a particularly good job of running Flash either.
It wasn’t quiet, he trashed it an online post.
I don’t think it matters on the iphone or any phone for that matter but I do know quite a few people that wouldn’t buy an ipad because it lacks Flash.
Well, if Adobe is to be sold, who would you rather have buy it? I would not much want Apple to buy it where Adobe would be subject to the great dictator’s strange designs. At least Microsoft would likely follow a more predictable and, these days, even open approach.
The notion that Microsoft and Adobe might join forces to combat Apple is a little odd. My understanding is that Apple makes most of its money from non-PC things – phones, pads, pods, etc. With each passing year, Apple probably cares less and less about what goes on in the old, traditional PC sphere as the income from the Mac and its products becomes a smaller part of the pie.
Sounds more like two old warhorses sounding off. They’re pretty worried and they don’t know what to do.
Run for your lives!!!!!!
ibm will buy microsoft who will buy apple who will buy adobe who will buy oracle who will buy novell
all the consumers will be happy and sing