Legal Commentary

The New York Times' DealBook (edited by Andrew Ross Sorkin) had an absolutely intriguing post on Oct. 7, "What a Microsoft-Adobe Merger Might Look Like."

Nick Bilton reports that "the chiefs of Microsoft and Adobe Systems met recently to discuss, among other possibilities, a merger of the two to better combat Apple."

The idea was one of many floated by Steven Ballmer (left) and Adobe's Shantanu Narayen. "But what would a union of the two bring -- if, of course, it were to come to pass at all?" pondered Bilton. "Despite its size -- $212.7 billion in market value, with $36.6 billion in cash and short-term investments as of June 30 -- Microsoft hasn't really done big acquisitions. (Its largest attempt was for Yahoo in 2008, and that went nowhere.)

Adobe would be its largest by far, with a market value of $15.1 billion as of Oct. 7. And the two have multimedia platforms -- Flash and Silverlight -- that have been blocked from the iPhone and iPad," he writes.

But the sheer speculation intrigued investors, he notes: Adobe shares jumped 17% on Oct. 7 "before they were halted by circuit breakers," according to Bloomberg News.