Here’s the full story.

I’m kind of shocked that the way I found out about this was through a friend and not through blogs. Sure, I’m only reading 500 or so, but still.

Adobe has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Macromedia at an estimated value of about $3.4 billion. The company said that the merging of the two companies will lead to providing customers with a more powerful set of solutions for creating, managing and delivering content across operating systems devices and media, while being able to meet a broader set of customer needs as well as experience growth especially in the mobile and enterprise segment.

Bruce Chizen, chief executive office of Adobe said, “Customers are calling for integrated software solutions that enable them to create, manage and deliver a wide range of compelling content and applications – from documents and images to audio and video.”

“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,” he added.

While this is huge, for a number of reasons, it’s also long overdue. As soon as Adobe started looking at GoLive they should have started looking at acquiring Macromedia.

Both companies do similar things, but they are (ironically) a perfect fit. Where Adobe is strong (Photoshop), Macromedia is weak. Where Macromedia is strong (Flash), Adobe is weak. Where Adobe is strong (Acrobat), Macromedia is weak. The list goes on and on. Yes, they compete directly, but those who use the software day in and day out simply buy the best – which often means spending the same amount on Adobe software as Macromedia software.

While I’m not sure how confident I am in Adobe’s ability to deliver as simple an interface as Macromedia’ers are used to, nor am confident in anyone’s ability to merge the product lines of these two companies succesfully, this is a huge, huge announcement. Especially in light of some non-announcements that have slipped under the surface recently in regards to both of these companies and blogging.