Adobe is buying Macromedia:

"By combining our powerful development, authoring and collaboration software — along with the complementary functionality of PDF and Flash — Adobe has the opportunity to bring this vision to life with an industry-defining technology platform," said Chizen in a statement.

In a hint that some products could be scrapped as a result of the merged, Chizen noted that "cost savings" are likely to be made at the company, though he added that the motivation for the deal was to continue to expand and grow business into new markets.

Color me dubious. These firms are too close in size to each other - there's going to be knife fighting galore in the hallways. Far from ending up as a threat to MS, or as a monopoly threat to consumers, this merger could create a window of opportunity. This kind of acquisition is always dicey; just look at the HP/Compaq mess...