Typekit Acquired by Adobe

As a disclaimer, I don’t nor have I ever used Typekit’s services, but they have a good reputation and certainly the best offering out there.

To me, this buyout is both a bad and a good thing:

First, despite what Typekit’s founders say, the original company is no more and Adobe has all the power now. Given that Adobe creates and sells its own fonts, I am a bit worried about Typekit’s offerings which could potentially be skewed in favor of Adobe instead of other types foundry. This gloomy picture has yet to reveal itself as Typekit’s primary revenue comes from its foundry-agnostic subscription model.

However, on the bright side, we are seeing more and more thoughtful attempts by Adobe to get out of the Flash fiasco and move towards web standards. Look at the company’s proposal for CSS4, CSS shaders: when I see something like this from the company that so fiercely defended an antiquated and buggy plugin, I can’t help but feel they are now on the right track, trying once again to matter on the web. And that is good.