Designing a Corporate Merger

I am perturbed to hear that Adobe is planning to buy Macromedia for $3.4 Billion. I like competition, and it was nice that there was some competition in the field of new media design products. Each company produces different pieces of design software, but with the combo suite of one you could generally avoid the other. Everyone says there is very little overlap between the two products, but I just don't agree. Between Freehand and Fireworks you get a lot of the functionality of the much more expensive combination of Illustrator and Photoshop. More than actual competition, it was nice to have two different companies in the same general field, neither of which was Microsoft. Adobe's Create Suite currentlly costs $1,199 for professionals, while Macromedia's Studio Suite costs $899. The Adobe student version is about $399 and the Macromedia student version is $249. $300 or $150 is a lot of money for a starving artist or student. The business reporters seem more interested in what will happen to each company's executives and stock; I'd like to know what will happen to each company's software products. (I guess this is because most business articles are written for an audience of management and stockholders, not customers.) Harry McCracken at PC World has the same anxieties.