why adobe flash is no longer being used? For that matter what does it even do ??
In: Technology
It’s interesting seeing all these comments on the history of Flash but I haven’t seen any mentions of Macromedia. Flash was developed by a small company and bought by Macromedia, an Adobe competitor who made multimedia authoring tools. Back in those days, multimedia meant CD-ROMs, something like a primitive modern website only static and housed on a CD. Macromedia seemed to see the writing on the wall and crafted Flash into the spiritual successor to their Director tool, which was mostly used for Cd-ROMs. They took Flash from obscurity and into ballooning popularity until Adobe bought them in 2005. Flash had become Macromedia’s crown jewel and for the most part Adobe axed all their other tools after the merger, so the general consensus was Adobe bought Macromedia to control Flash.
I’ve always wondered what would have happened if Adobe hadn’t bought Flash. In don’t think they were the worst steward of Flash but I always got the impression they let many aspects of it languish. Certainly, most of their other products (looking at you, Photoshop) have not progressed much during those 15 years. Seems to me that Macromedia were Adobe’s chief rival and because they were allowed to merge, we all got many years of Adobe market dominance where they just sat on their laurels and let the profits roll in.
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