Comments on: Memo to Microsoft: Buy Adobe, Not Yahoo

By: TR808

TR808 — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 14:27:52 +0000

I also think Microsoft should seriously consider an aquisition of Adobe.

Not only for Flash, etc… but also as a good hold onto desktop apps including Apple Mac apps.

Yahoo is not the best aquisition choice.

I’ll be happy to not have Adobe Acrobat continuously nagging me about updates, even though I keep all my software up to date. Java’s the same, but we all know MS won’t go there again.

By: skierpage

skierpage — Fri, 02 May 2008 02:48:46 +0000

Macromedia and now Adobe have been pushing Flash for other devices than PCs for years now. It has a somewhat desperate “But we’re really big in Japan!” feel to it. However I believe some version of Flash is currently essential to get billions of Web videos (including the vital playback controls) to work on mobile devices.

But that’s pretty unrelated to all the Flex/AIR/RIA/platform blah application runtime effort. Besides, most of the web sites that use Flash for UI and animations force a particular window size, so Flash’s resolution-independent display, which could have been a huge win for other devices, goes for naught.

I don’t see Microsoft embracing or buying a standard that’s now intertwined with open specs it opposes (ECMAScript 4) and that competes with Silverlight, but who knows? If MS wanted to hinder Adobe long-term it could throw its weight behind the HTML5 video tag; again, the “You need Flash” meme that leads to the Flash Player’s ubiquity is now driven more by Flash videos than Flash animations on Web sites, and the handful of AIR apps are insignificant.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 01 May 2008 21:27:04 +0000

I suspect this is really just a clever recruiting scheme engineered by Google. Remember the FCC auction trick? Similar deal. Somehow they convinced Ballmer to do this, to scare Yahoo! employees enough that they will start submitting their resumes to Google HR.

By: Curt

Curt — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:50:56 +0000

I would definitely prefer that Microsoft *NOT* acquire any other company (especially none that have reasonably good/useful products), that it continue to “innovate” in its own special way.

Aside from copyright/royalty issues, I would agree that Microsoft ought to use existing technologies such as Flash (rather than creating another “standard” or obfuscating a current standard) for their own unique purpose/application.

How many times must they notice a working wheel but then say it wasn’t constructed *their* way (building a new one from scratch, *again*), or that its nearly right except it doesn’t have pearl inlaid spokes?! Might they be better off **actually** innovating?

By: Matthew Gertner

Matthew Gertner — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:27:52 +0000

Pat,

In my opinion Microsoft is letting itself be seduced by the success of Google and trying to pursue a similar strategy (i.e. search + advertising) despite the fact that this doesn’t jibe with what the company does well.

Silverlight (or Flash) is a much more appropriate direction since it is consistent with Microsoft’s main line of business (i.e. developing apps). As apps move onto the web, Microsoft has to figure out a way to react and buying Adobe would be a great way to do so.

Buying Yahoo to compete with Google would be a distraction and unlikely to succeed anyway.

By: Pat

Pat — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:14:11 +0000

How is Silverlight (chasing after Flash) any different in concept from acquiring Yahoo (chasing after Google)?

By: RichB

RichB — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:44:00 +0000

> Its Silverlight initiative is a step in the right direction
…
> when was the last time you used an ActiveX control on the web

Answer: Silverlight.