Adobe Systems' acquisition of Macromedia and Flash late last year could be one of the best tech deals since News Corp. and MySpace parent Intermix. Macromedia's Flash is poised to become the de facto
Web site development software of the new entertainment industry. Adobe acquired Macromedia in December for $3.4 billion in stock; since then, consumer-generated media in the form of videos and
mash-ups on sites like YouTube has exploded, as has interest in online video advertising. Online video looks set to be the next frontier in Internet entertainment, and many of the biggies--including
YouTube and Google Video--use Flash as their technology. Microsoft's Windows Media is still the number 1 video format, handling 60 percent of streaming video, but Flash has soared from nowhere to
number two (19 percent of the market) in two years. The
San Jose Mercury News attributes the widespread Flash adoption to the proliferation of high-speed Web access and the rise of social
networks. It's the easiest format to use--you can embed Flash inside Web sites very easily, and as a streaming technology, it involves no downloads, so its popularity has taken off. As such, it has
quickly become the favored format of creative agencies.
Read the whole story at The San Jose Mercury News »
