Huge news! This will affect many hundreds of thousands of people who have dedicated themselves to the products of one company or the other. I doubt if there’s any clear indication of what the final product mix will look like.

Desktop publishing specialist Adobe Systems is buying multimedia applications maker Macromedia in a $3.4 billion deal geared toward building a software powerhouse.

The all-stock deal, announced Monday, is designed to create a better-stocked source of tools for building and distributing multimedia content across a range of operating systems and devices, the companies said. They also stressed that the merger will enable them to expand more rapidly into the market for audio and video applications for handhelds and other gadgets.

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