Adobe Inc. is an American computer software company headquartered in San Jose, California. In 1982, John Warnock and Charles Geschke left Xerox PARC and established Adobe to develop and sell the PostScript page description language. [1] Apple Computer licensed PostScript in 1985 for use in its LaserWriter printers, which helped spark the desktop publishing revolution. [2] The company has acquired 25 companies, purchased stakes in five, and divested six, most of which were software companies. Of the companies that Adobe has acquired, 18 were based in the United States. Adobe has not released the financial details for most of these mergers and acquisitions.
Adobe's first acquisition was Emerald City Software in March 1990. In August 1994, the company acquired Aldus Corporation, a Seattle-based software company credited with creating the desktop publishing industry with its PageMaker software. [3] The company's products were integrated into Adobe's product line later in the year, and re-branded as Adobe PageMaker and Adobe After Effects; [4] Aldus also owned the TIFF file format, transferring ownership to Adobe. [5] In October 1995, Adobe acquired the desktop publishing software company Frame Technology for US$566 million, and re-branded its FrameMaker software to Adobe FrameMaker. [6] Adobe acquired GoLive Systems in January 1999 and obtained its CyberStudio HTML editor software, releasing it as Adobe GoLive. [7] In May 2003, Adobe acquired Syntrillium Software and its digital audio editor software Cool Edit Pro, and merged it into its product line, re-releasing it as Adobe Audition. [8]
In the 1990s, Adobe purchased a minority stake in four companies, and it purchased a stake in one company in the 2000s. Adobe has also divested six companies, in which parts of the company are sold to another company. All of its divestments were made in the 1990s, with its most recent divestment made in August 1999 when it sold Macromedia Pathware to Lotus Software.
Number | Company | Country | Acquired on | Acquired for (USD) | References |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Emerald City Software | United States | March 19, 1990 | — | [9] |
2 | BluePoint Technologies | United States | June 20, 1990 | — | [10] |
3 | LaserTools-Language Tech [note 1] | United States | June 1, 1992 | — | [11] |
4 | OCR Systems | United States | June 29, 1992 | — | [12] |
5 | Nonlinear Technologies | United States | 1992 | — | [13] |
6 | After Hours Software | United States | 1993 | — | [13] |
7 | Compumation | United States | 1994 | — | [13] |
8 | Aldus Corporation | United States | August 31, 1994 | $437,676,000 | [14] |
9 | LaserTools | United States | September 9, 1994 | — | [15] |
10 | Photoshop | United States | 1995 | — | [16] |
11 | Frame Technology | United States | October 30, 1995 | $566,567,000 | [17] |
12 | Ares Software | United States | May 20, 1996 | — | [18] |
13 | Sandcastle | United States | March 14, 1997 | $3,500,000 | [19] |
14 | HyWay Ferranti | United Kingdom | September 5, 1997 | — | [20] |
15 | DigiDox | United States | September 16, 1997 | — | [21] |
16 | GoLive Systems | United States | January 4, 1999 | — | [22] |
17 | Fotiva | United States | December 5, 2001 | — | [23] |
18 | Accelio [note 2] | Canada | April 15, 2002 | $72,000,000 | [24] |
19 | Syntrillium Software | United States | May 2003 | — | [25] |
20 | Yellow Dragon Software-Tech [note 3] | United States | November 10, 2003 | — | [26] |
21 | Q-Link Technologies, Inc. | United States | May 3, 2004 | — | [27] |
22 | OKYZ | France | December 7, 2004 | — | [28] |
23 | Macromedia | United States | December 3, 2005 | $3,573,000,000 | [29] |
24 | Navisware | United States | December 16, 2005 | — | [30] |
25 | Trade and Technologies France | France | April 21, 2006 | — | [31] |
26 | Pixmantec | Denmark | June 26, 2006 | — | [32] |
27 | InterAKT | Romania | September 5, 2006 | — | [33] |
28 | Serious Magic Inc. | United States | October 19, 2006 | — | [34] |
29 | Scene7 | United States | May 31, 2007 | — | [35] |
30 | Virtual Ubiquity | United States | October 1, 2007 | — | [36] |
31 | YaWah | Denmark | September 15, 2008 | — | [37] |
32 | Business Catalyst | Australia | August 31, 2009 | — | [38] |
33 | Omniture | United States | September 15, 2009 | $1,800,000,000 | [39] |
34 | Day Software | Switzerland | July 28, 2010 | $240,000,000 | [40] |
35 | Demdex | United States | January 18, 2011 | — | [41] |
36 | EchoSign | United States | July 18, 2011 | — | [42] |
37 | Iridas Technology | Germany | September 8, 2011 | — | [43] |
38 | Nitobi | Canada | October 3, 2011 | — | [44] |
39 | Typekit | United States | October 3, 2011 | — | [45] |
40 | Auditude | United States | November 1, 2011 | $120,000,000 | [46] |
41 | Efficient Frontier Technology | United States | November 30, 2011 | — | [47] |
42 | Behance Inc. | United States | December 21, 2012 | — | [48] |
43 | Neolane | France | July 23, 2013 | $600,000,000 | [49] [50] |
44 | Satellite | United States | July 31, 2013 | — | |
45 | Aviary | United States | September 22, 2014 | — | [51] |
46 | Fotolia | United States | January 28, 2015 | $800,000,000 | [52] |
47 | Mixamo | United States | June 1, 2015 | — | [53] |
48 | Livefyre | United States | May 10, 2016 | — | [54] |
49 | TubeMogul | United States | November 10, 2016 | $540,000,000 | [55] |
50 | Sayspring | United States | April 16, 2018 | — | [56] |
51 | Uru | United States | April 29, 2018 | — | [57] |
52 | Magento | United States | May 21, 2018 | $1,680,000,000 | [58] |
53 | Marketo | United States | September 20, 2018 | $4,750,000,000 | [59] |
54 | Allegorithmic | France | January 23, 2019 | — | [60] |
55 | Workfront | United States | November 9, 2020 | $1,500,000,000 | [61] |
56 | Frame.io | United States | October 7, 2021 | $1,275,000,000 | [62] |
57 | ContentCal | United Kingdom | December 8, 2021 | — | [63] |
58 | Abstract Notebooks | United States | December 23, 2021 | — | [64] |
Adobe also owns the assets of numerous companies, through less direct means, through the mergers or acquisitions of companies later acquired by Adobe.
Date | Company | Business | Country | Value (USD) | References |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
September 21, 1992 | Verity | Computer consulting | United States | — | [67] |
March 1, 1994 | Crosswise | Applications software | United States | — | [68] |
April 19, 1995 | Siebel Systems | Application services provider | United States | — | [69] |
August 8, 1995 | Fractal Design | Graphics software | United States | $2,000,000 | [70] |
March 23, 2007 | Skysoft | Online digital music services | Republic of China | $1,000,000 | [71] |
Date | Acquirer | Target company | Target business | Acquirer country | Value (USD) | References |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
November 1, 1991 | Paracomp | MacroMind | Software | United States | — | [72] |
March 28, 1996 | — | Luminous [note 4] | Graphics software | United States | — | [73] |
February 5, 1997 | INSO | MasterSoft | Publishing software | United States | $3,000,000 | [74] |
March 24, 1999 | Creative Internet Solutions | ChangeMedia | Internet service provider | United States | — | [75] |
May 20, 1999 | Calian Technologies Ltd. | Why Interactive | Multi-media company | Canada | $4,360,000 | [76] |
August 30, 1999 | Lotus Development | Macromedia Pathware | Internet software | United States | — | [77] |
Adobe Inc., formerly Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American computer software company based in San Jose, California. It offers a wide range of programs from web design tools, photo manipulation and vector creation, through to video/audio editing, mobile app development, print layout and animation software. It has historically specialized in software for the creation and publication of a wide range of content, including graphics, photography, illustration, animation, multimedia/video, motion pictures, and print. Its flagship products include Adobe Photoshop image editing software; Adobe Illustrator vector-based illustration software; Adobe Acrobat Reader and the Portable Document Format (PDF); and a host of tools primarily for audio-visual content creation, editing and publishing. Adobe offered a bundled solution of its products named Adobe Creative Suite, which evolved into a subscription software as a service (SaaS) offering named Adobe Creative Cloud. The company also expanded into digital marketing software and in 2021 was considered one of the top global leaders in Customer Experience Management (CXM).
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Adobe RoboHelp is a help authoring tool (HAT) developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows. RoboHelp was created by Gen Kiyooka, and Blue Sky Software released version 1.0 in January 1992.
Aldus Corporation was an American software company best known for its pioneering desktop publishing software. PageMaker, the company's most well-known product, ushered in the modern era of desktop computers such as the Macintosh seeing widespread use in the publishing industry. Paul Brainerd, the company's co-founder, coined the term desktop publishing to describe this paradigm. The company also originated the Tag Image File Format (TIFF) file format, widely used in the digital graphics profession.
Macromedia, Inc., was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company (1992–2005) headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Flash and Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its rival Adobe Systems on December 3, 2005.
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PressWise was digital imposition software to quickly and easily impose most any variety of flat and folding layouts. It was acquired by the Aldus Prepress Group affectionately known in the print and publishing industry as the Aldus WiseGuys in August 1991 from Emulation Technologies Inc. of Cleveland, Ohio. It was further developed by the Aldus Press Group and launched as the first of many Aldus prepress products in 1993. It was subsequently owned by Adobe Systems, then Luminous Corporation (Seattle), then Imation, and finally ScenicSoft. PressWise was discontinued by ScenicSoft in 1999 ultimately.
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Figma is a collaborative web application for interface design, with additional offline features enabled by desktop applications for macOS and Windows. The feature set of Figma focuses on user interface and user experience design, with an emphasis on real-time collaboration, utilising a variety of vector graphics editor and prototyping tools. The Figma mobile app for Android and iOS allows viewing and interacting with Figma prototypes in real-time on mobile and tablet devices.