Leviathan

Last week it was announced that Adobe intends to purchase Macromedia. The idea that two graphic/multimedia giants may merge to become a leviathan makes me nervous. Is Adobe hoping to corner the market by acquiring Flash, the most popular program to animate and add interactivity to Web sites, not to mention Dreamweaver, the best WYSIWYG web-design editor around? What will happen to Fireworks? Surely Adobe won't bother to keep it around once the merger closes, not with Photoshop under its belt. Macromedia's Robohelp, an online Help line of products, was expected to receive the axe. Will Adobe resurrect it? I'm skeptical and so are some of the core RoboHelp developers who, seeing the writing on the wall, have broken off and formed a new company, MadCap Software. No doubt in a few years' time Adobe will be making MadCap an offer.