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Microsoft Buying Adobe?

uk.reuters.com

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Re: Microsoft Buying Adobe?

#71

Post by emilsedgh »

_b8r0 wrote: post #66

This would be quite interesting. If Microsoft bought Adobe, what would happen to PDF on Mac? What would happen to Silverlight? Would the next Office use PDF as a standard format? Then there's the creative suite. What would happen to photoshop? Dreamweaver (or MS Frontpage 2012 as it'd be renamed)? InDesign (or Microsoft Publisher 2012 as it'd be called)? Also think about the other side of it. The Acrobat team would b…

PDF has an open spec and third party developers could make as many PDF readers as they want. Like on Linux, where there are plenty of PDF readers, mostly based on Poppler. I guess there must be non-Adobe PDF readers for mac.

Re: Microsoft Buying Adobe?

#73

Post by olalonde »

Microsoft should start thinking about acquiring a web company instead. One day, they will look back and realize that, in retrospective, they shouldn't have held on to the desktop. An analogy could be made with newspapers who held on to the paper. Time might prove me wrong, but I doubt it.

Re: Microsoft Buying Adobe?

#74

Post by old-gregg »

Jokes aside, it makes perfect sense for both of them. Adobe's CS and Microsoft Office are naturally self-complementing desktop giants. Both companies make a ton of money selling desktop software to the enterprise, yet outside of Flash/Sliverlight battle they don't cross each other paths.

I, for one, welcome this development. It brings some hopes for better performing Flash, which I hate with a passion but its a fact of life. Flash is in need of some engineering muscle. There are many things Microsoft can possibly do to it and most of them are good, see: kill it -> good, open source it -> good, merge with silverlight -> good.

Same thing with other Adobe products: they used to be best in class some time ago, but I'm convinced that company cannot code anymore, but Microsoft still can.

No way this is bad news. The worse that can happen is nothing changes.

Edit: also, lets stop this nonsense with applying "still somewhat profitable" and "dying" to these companies. Both are doing great financially. Adobe's profits from CS keep breaking records - look at http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/2010...

Re: Microsoft Buying Adobe?

#75

Post by jpablo »

mcbain wrote: post #67
matrix wrote: post #34

I suppose this is feasible if Microsoft is looking to acquire Adobe's enterprise customer base - the PDF, document management, etc part of the company. Having Air/Flex/Flash might also be nice, but doesn't seem like a good fit for Microsoft's traditional Windows-centric strategy (one they should abandon, in my view - the days of owning the market via the desktop are rapidly coming to a close). What I'd love to see is…

What is Microsoft's track record for spinning off companies? The Photoshop/CS part of Adobe is somewhat profitable, correct? Would MS let it go (even for a bucket of cash)?

Expedia is a Microsoft spin off. I guess that one worked ok.

Re: Microsoft Buying Adobe?

#76

Post by andybak »

brudgers wrote: post #44
dbrannan wrote: post #2

I've often wondered why Apple doesn't buy Adobe, kill all development for PCs, and leave Microsoft high and dry in the creative market. Just saying...

I suspect that were Adobe to leave the Windows market, the vacated "niche" would be quickly filled.

It might be harder than you think to replace highly refined creative tools such as Illustrator or Photoshop.

Although they have become rather bloated and the last few versions have failed to innovate in significant ways, there is a lot of graphics professionals who would be very reluctant to waste all that hard-won muscle-memory.

Plus there's a lot of work-flow knowledge in them there apps.

Re: Microsoft Buying Adobe?

#79

Post by dsspence »

_b8r0 wrote: post #66

This would be quite interesting. If Microsoft bought Adobe, what would happen to PDF on Mac? What would happen to Silverlight? Would the next Office use PDF as a standard format? Then there's the creative suite. What would happen to photoshop? Dreamweaver (or MS Frontpage 2012 as it'd be renamed)? InDesign (or Microsoft Publisher 2012 as it'd be called)? Also think about the other side of it. The Acrobat team would b…

Apple doesn't license PDF from Adobe even though it is part of OS X's native graphics renderer.

“The Quartz renderer and the PDF interpreter that Apple ships with Mac OS X are built with Apple code, with no external licenses, by Apple employees. Adobe just publishes a specification for how it’s supposed to function. This gives Apple considerably more flexibility with regard to what Quartz and the PDF interpreter can be used for.”

http://www.prepressure.com/pdf/basics/osx_quartz

Re: Microsoft Buying Adobe?

#80

Post by mcknz »

charlief wrote: post #21

Regarding: "Adobe's shares rise as much as 17 percent" Just a small detail, but the above bullet exaggerates the indicative reaction of the market. It was up 17 percent for an instant because someone fat fingered and bought it for $30.00 exactly at 3:08pm (Added: 12 minutes after the announcement at 2:56pm), maybe a little excited to buy in. Really it is up 10-11%, which is a strong and positive reaction, but there i…

indicative reaction of the HFT algos -- ahem, I mean Waddell & Reed.
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