I've been trying to remember just how many companies and products Adobe has taken over in its quest to dominate the creative publishing market, where it now makes an impressive 97% gross profit margin. (Overall, it's only 93.7%.)
The two biggies were Aldus (of PageMaker fame) and Frame Technology, which dominated desktop publishing on Unix platforms. It has also picked up a few other things in passing, such as Ceneca (PageMill, SiteMill), GoLive and Syntrillium (for CoolEdit Pro, renamed Adobe Audition).
Adobe has also bought numerous small companies such as LaserTools, Compumation, Visualware, Hyphen, Ares, Swell, Digibox, Sandcastle, Finepoint, Attitude, Photomerge, Glassbook, Fotiva and Accellio. (Not from memory: I looked it up.)
Macromedia also has a history of takeovers. It was formed from two companies: Authorware and MacroMind. Along the way, it acquired Altsys (FreeHand), Fauve (xRes), OSC Software (Deck II), Backstage (iband), Presedia (Express), Allaire (ColdFusion), and most importantly, FutureWave, the developer of FutureSplash, which became Macromedia Flash.
Of course, this isn't unusual in the software industry, where companies such as Computer Associates, Symantec and Corel have similarly aquired lots of other companies directly, or their products indirectly.
The big mergers attract attention, but the little ones are going on all the time....
