To make a correction here - it was not a merge it was an acquisition. In my opinion this ends all the debates on who the best company was between Adobe and Macromedia.
I believe Adobe purchased Macromedia to avoid Microsoft from doing it. There will be many more purchases as well as merges to come.
For the future I predict:
Adobe will take advantage of their newely owned ColdFusion, which I also predict they will used in future development of a Content management system stemmed off of some of Contributes technology. ColdFusion will open many doors for Adobe!!
Dreamweaver - Bye Bye - Trashed for all its bloated code that it renders. Adobe GoLive (while not the most popular to the general public) actually generates much lighter code which is also optimized for better cross platform compatibility.
Fireworks can be kissed good bye!
If we remember back several years when Adobe sued Macromedia for copying Adobe's GUI - specifically the tabs. Adobe lost - so they just purchased Macromedia and put an end to it. ha!
Adobe is software is not designed for the average user. Macromedia won its popularity because it was more for everyone. Adobe may take advantage of that strategy and release products for the everyday Joe. That will be nice for increasing their user base.
My 2 cents