Few applauded as Quark, Adobe danced

SAN FRANCISCO -- When it was all over, what did the publishing industry learn from the proposed merger of Adobe Systems Inc. of San Jose and Quark Inc. of Denver? Well, at a Sept. 2 session devoted to the topic at Seybold Seminars San Francisco, the word thrown around a lot was "passion."

A lot of emotion had been expended on the idea.

In mid-August, Quark released letters sent to Adobe, proposing a merger of the two makers of page-layout applications. Though there were assurances that the combined company could skirt anti-trust issues (Quark proposed selling Adobe's new K2 page layout application, as well as its PageMaker and FrameMaker), Quark never made a specific financial offer. Adobe angrily rejected the overture. In mid-September, Quark ducked out in a letter to Adobe.

Whether or not Quark was serious about the offer was a central theme of the Seybold session. Panelist Eric Shropshire, a consultant who was a product manager at Quark for many years, told the crowd, "I can tell you after working with Fred [Ebrahimi, Quark's chief executive] for most of my time at Quark, he's dead serious. Fred rarely bluffs."

Quark had been thinking about a possible Adobe acquisition for some time, Shropshire and other panelists related. When the price of Adobe's depressed stock hit a 52-week low in August, Quark executives were propelled into making the move.

Many on the panel and in the audience made reference to a demonstration of Adobe's new K2 page layout product, which had been shown during Steve Jobs' keynote address the day before (see Steve and Steve speak).

Ben Rotholtz, the K2 product manager, demonstrated only a couple of features of the product. Using an interface that is much like other Adobe products, Rotholtz created a page and a text box, flowing in text from another application.

He then showed Something Completely New: He sheared the box and tilted it backwards, giving it a fade-away effect.

The resulting warped text could still be edited.

Perhaps this demonstration influenced the crowd in the next day's session, when moderator Craig Cline directed the group of about 750 people, "All of those who think Quark should buy Adobe, raise your hand."

Not a hand went up.

-- dmc

See also Digital Revolution has ended, if Seybold is any indication.

From THE COLE PAPERS, October 1998, Copyright © 1998, All Rights Reserved.