No doubt you’ll see this in a few places today, but it appears that this is real and not some April Fool’s Joke after the fact.

Mike Chambers of Macromedia says that their companies are coming together, Adobe says they are acquiring Macromedia. Either way you look at it, the two are coming together in an all stock deal that came out of nowhere.

This move sees the two most proprietary formats in terms of web-based delivery of content (PDF and Flash) come together under one roof. Each company has often argued about the ubiquity of their format - does this just make their penetration that much deeper?

What does this mean for their graphics programs? Fireworks vs Photoshop? Will they maintain both products? Illustrator vs. Freehand? This is going to be huge.

I’m almost tempted to watch and listen:

The management teams of both companies will host a financial analyst and investor conference call today at 8:00 a.m. ET (5:00 a.m. PT). The call can be accessed at 888-278-5324 (U.S.) or 706-643-3100 (outside U.S.) with conference call ID #5643249. A live Webcast of the call will also be provided at http://www.adobe.com/ADBE and http://www.macromedia.com/MACR.

Where, oh where, do you think this is going? Will this have any impact on you at all? I suppose for me it will depend on what happens with their product lines…