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Putting the 'con' into 'consolidation'
Apr. 18th, 2005 03:37 pmAdobe bought Macromedia. What does this mean for you, gentle readers? Well, it means that Adobe Illustrator will probably consume Macromedia Freehand, Adobe ImageReady will probably consume Macromedia Fireworks, Macromedia Dreamweaver will probably replace the various Adobe web design products such as Go Live, and I expect some of the top end video and multimedia products will get combined too. Additionally, I expect Adobe's previous support for SVG, a free format which was supposedly an alternative to Macromedia's Flash, will rapidly disappear. If we're lucky, Flash will change to use SVG but I'm not holding my breath.
So, it's good news for anyone in multimedia who is trying to learn the software because soon there will be no choices to make - there will be one leading product for every area, owned by Adobe, and nothing else worth considering. And for those of us who hope that competition between products means the companies compete on the grounds of price, features, stability... well, don't expect any of that in the future. And the web is likely to get less usable; Adobe wanted to turn the web into PDF files and Macromedia wanted every page to be a Flash site - well, now they can use double the influence to inflict both upon you.
When is it all going to end? Companies just keep merging and buying the others, and what're we left with? A gradual descent into the megacorporation-dominated future of many a cyberpunk novel. (I can hear some of you cheering already.) At what point do we say 'enough is enough' at the way choices get eroded by the so-called 'free' market, which I suppose is aptly named because the only people with freedom are those who can afford to take advantage of the market. All the while, we're gradually getting disenfranchised by commercial 'standards'. A lot of job agencies won't even take your CV or resumé if it's not in Microsoft Word format, for example. Who does that benefit, except Microsoft?
And don't get me started on the music and video companies working to ensure that you only watch and listen to the products they have carefully selected for you, fighting legal battles on behalf of their 'artists' to outlaw technology that allows you to get around their dominance of radio, television, and retail. Consolidation of the major music labels over recent years has just given them more power in this regard.
At this point I should go on to say how careful use of technology can be the saviour of the oppressed masses, but I think I've said enough already...
So, it's good news for anyone in multimedia who is trying to learn the software because soon there will be no choices to make - there will be one leading product for every area, owned by Adobe, and nothing else worth considering. And for those of us who hope that competition between products means the companies compete on the grounds of price, features, stability... well, don't expect any of that in the future. And the web is likely to get less usable; Adobe wanted to turn the web into PDF files and Macromedia wanted every page to be a Flash site - well, now they can use double the influence to inflict both upon you.
When is it all going to end? Companies just keep merging and buying the others, and what're we left with? A gradual descent into the megacorporation-dominated future of many a cyberpunk novel. (I can hear some of you cheering already.) At what point do we say 'enough is enough' at the way choices get eroded by the so-called 'free' market, which I suppose is aptly named because the only people with freedom are those who can afford to take advantage of the market. All the while, we're gradually getting disenfranchised by commercial 'standards'. A lot of job agencies won't even take your CV or resumé if it's not in Microsoft Word format, for example. Who does that benefit, except Microsoft?
And don't get me started on the music and video companies working to ensure that you only watch and listen to the products they have carefully selected for you, fighting legal battles on behalf of their 'artists' to outlaw technology that allows you to get around their dominance of radio, television, and retail. Consolidation of the major music labels over recent years has just given them more power in this regard.
At this point I should go on to say how careful use of technology can be the saviour of the oppressed masses, but I think I've said enough already...
