20050419

End of an Era? Adobe's buying Macromedia

I've not found anyone cheering yet but...many people blown away about the cognitive effect. Does anyone else remember the MA-based Allaire? Travel back to January 17, 2001: "The outlook for the next fiscal year is a little muddier as [Macromedia] today announced the purchase of Web applications platform developer Allaire (Nasdaq: ALLR), which owns the HomeSite webpage editor and the ColdFusion application server for developing scalable e-business software." (Courtesy of the Motley Fools.) Going forth to 2002, we have this commentary, courtesy of evolt.org posting:
Macromedia started out as a developer of animation products for the CD-ROM world only to find that market being quickly replaced by the burgeoning World Wide Web. Their product line was quickly changed to attack this new market. Two of the products it introduced, DreamWeaver and Flash, became the most widely used products in their respective categories. More recently, Macromedia acquired Allaire, which brought with it three important products: HomeSite, ColdFusion, and JRun. HomeSite, like DreamWeaver, was the most widely used product in its category and seemly competed with DreamWeaver. ColdFusion and JRun were both pioneers in the Web application world that had strong followings. These five products effectively guaranteed Macromedia a spot on almost every Web developer’s desktop, and in some cases, their servers as well.
Jeremy Allaire's still around; see a interview from just last week @ Engadget. So who fires the next salvo? Oh, yeah nobody...nobody else left standing but Microsoft. Here's a an alternate history in what couldabeen -- "Will Macromedia Soon Become Micromedia?" from 2003.

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