The Department of Justice has cleared Adobe Systems Inc.’s planned $3.4 billion acquisition of Macromedia Inc. without requiring any divestitures or adding conditions.
Agency officials, concerned that the merged company would dominate the market for computer graphics and Internet publishing tools, in July had expanded the antitrust probe into the deal. Adobe makes the industry-leading Illustrator graphics software, which competes with Macromedia’s Freehand. In the Web arena, Macromedia’s Dreamweaver is a major publishing tool, facing only minor competition from Adobe’s GoLive.
