Microsoft planning to acquire Macromedia
The Register is running a story about speculation from "industry analysts" who think Microsoft may try to acquire Macromedia soon.
This comes as little surprise to me. Macromedia has practically positioned themselves for this. Flash is "the one that got away". Somehow, Macromedia bested Microsoft in this area. Remember "Liquid Motion"? Or how about "Chromeffects"? Those projects died in 1998. In the meantime, the Flash player is reportedly on 97.8% of browsers. And we're not talking about Windows only -- all platforms. Any software product that achieves that level of market penetration is bound to invite attention from Microsoft.
The second thing they did to attract Microsoft's attention was to put that "MX" on all their products. A very Microsoft-ish thing to do. Microsoft loves the letter X. For example: Windows XP, Office XP, Xbox, ActiveX, DirectX, X# (a new language they are supposedly developing, tuned for XML processing), Excel, Explorer, Exchange, Outlook Express and Expedia (ok, granted, that's stretching a bit). Perhaps the only reason Microsoft is developing software for a Unix OS is for the "X" in Mac OS X.
But if they were to acquire Macromedia, it would be sad. For one, Microsoft doesn't need more control over our web experience. And you can be certain that the Linux Flash player would be the first casualty of the acquisition.
Yeah...months waiting for the late release of the final Flash 6 Player (and with a MS-free Macromedia), if this buyout ever happens we'll be screwed.
On the X related naming frenzy, you forgot the X-Box :P
Nope -- look again, it's third in the list. :)
doh!
Perish the thought if this ever happens.
I'm gonna kill myself the day Fireworks become a Microsoftware and only.
Flash only for Windows / MacOS. Dreamweaver inserting junk code into your HTML and suggesting you to use ASP and ODBC instead of PHP and MySQL. Oh, no. This is hell.
I think I'm gonna buy a Macintosh MacOSX based. At least, it's Unix.
But they are VERY expensive and I'm pooooor! :(
I have a Microsoft-free hard drive on my iMac, and I always will for the forseeable future.
So if Microsoft buys out Macromedia... I guess I'll never upgrade my Flash plugin again, then. I don't think it'll be that much of a loss, really.