WebProNews

Adobe acquired Macromedia for $3.4 billion in stock. What's interesting about this deal is how the combined company has two web platforms, .pdf and Flash, and neither are web friendly.

Both provide slick presentation, but to the detriment of open hypertext. If they can integrate as a company, Adobe should be well positioned to compete against Microsoft. Adobe CEO:

"By combining our powerful development, authoring and collaboration software - along with the complementary functionality of PDF and Flash - Adobe has the opportunity to bring this vision to life with an industry-defining technology platform."

This is also the first time a company with a significant portion of their employees blogging has been acquired. So far, Mike Chambers is the only one to post, acknowledging regulatory hurdle of overlapping product lines and he is excited at the prospect of having more resources behind Flash. Will be interesting to see what Marc has to say.

For more ... see: Om, Jeff, Rafat, Reuters, Cnet and NY Times.

Adobe Press Release: Adobe Acquires Macromedia

Ross Mayfield is CEO and co-founder of Socialtext, an emerging provider of Enterprise Social Software that dramatically increases group productivity and develops a group memory.

He also writes Ross Mayfield's Weblog which focuses on markets, technology and musings.