14 DAY TRIAL // After meeting in secret with his counterpart at Microsoft in the first half of October 2010, Adobe Chief Executive Officer Shantanu Narayen denied the possibility of a marriage with Microsoft, in an interview for FOX Business, via Seattle PI. Following the face-to-face between Narayen and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, the rumor mill went wild.
Speculation that the Redmond company was courting Adobe for a takeover emerged, causing the stock of Creative Suite’s makers to explode.
Following the meeting, both Microsoft and Adobe downplayed the event, with the software giant commenting extremely little on the topic.
Narayen now indicates that Microsoft will not be buying Adobe, and it also appears that a merger is out of the question.
“Clearly Adobe is at the center of the content revolution that you see happening. The amount of content that is being created for web, for video, mobile devices is just exploding. And you know, we are the people who make all that happen,” Narayen stated.
“And clearly we have significant partners in that space. Microsoft's one of those partners we work closely with. But, you know, we value our independence, and we continue to think that we just have tremendous opportunities ahead of us as a company,” he emphasized.
Still, Narayen managed to be evasive enough when answering additional questions about the discussion with Steve Ballmer.
Certainly, Adobe regards Microsoft as a strategic partner, but Narayen underlined that the same is valid for companies such as Google and Apple.
“We have tremendous strategic partnerships, that's right. Not just with Microsoft. We certainly have partnerships with Google and with Apple, as well as with all media companies who use our creative tools to produce content,” he explained.
Narayen would also not confirm that Ballmer wanted a closer partnership, one that would permit the duo to tackle Apple.
Apple’s Steve Jobs refused to put Adobe’s Flash on iPhone, and Microsoft certainly needs no more reasons to want to bury the Cupertino company.
“We partner with Microsoft and the partnership with Microsoft is all about making sure that our creative applications, which are the best-selling creative applications in the world, work really well on the Windows platform. So, that is the nature of the partnership with Microsoft. Similar to the partnership we have with many other companies,” Narayen added.