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Where is there an end of it? | Adobe acquired Typekit: sigh

Where is there an end of it?

Alex Brown's weblog

Adobe acquired Typekit: sigh

19 May 2012 Alex (3)

Last October Adobe acquired Typekit, a handy service that serves out fonts for web pages, and which this blog uses, for a fee of $49/year.

Logging into Typekit today to fiddle with fonts (easier and sometimes more satisfying than actually writing content), I notice that customers are now being prompted to update their accounts to use Adobe ID. Sigh. Perhaps I have an Adobe ID (I blank out the tedium of creating all these IDs and accounts as you buy things on the web), perhaps not. But I don’t particularly want to change, and I don’t see why Typekit wants me to — this has everything to do with the internal structures of their business and nothing to do with the customer. It smells like the infamous Yahoo ID putch that marked the beginning of Flickr’s decline after being acquired by Yahoo! If the same pattern is followed, it is only a matter of time before the new ID becomes mandatory.

So perhaps I should investigate Google web fonts? If I’m going to forced to use some corporation’s ID scheme to get the fonts I want, at least with that one I won’t be charged at the same time …

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Comments (3) -

  • ctrambler

    5/19/2012 8:54:35 PM |

    I know the feeling ...

    A while ago everyone was trying to do federated ID with facebook. They do this by having two parallel login, one for their system, and another with facebook. I was worried that I would be forced to use a facebook account, which I do not have. Luckily for me it turns out that the extra traffic they were hoping with a facebook login was worth the risk of being subservient to facebook and dual login or replacement login were not pursued.

    Totally agree that there is no good reason to force us, the customers, to change the way we sign in. At the minimum as a courtesy and to say thank you to you their _paying_ customer, they should had simply copied over the password.

    By the way, how are you feeling now?

    ctrambler

    • Alex

      5/26/2012 2:29:13 PM |

      @Rambler

      Whatever happened to OpenID?

      As for me, I'm doing okay. My follow-up scan revealled nothing untoward and the doctors have pronounced me cured. I'm not quite back in showroom condition, but have much of my shine back Smile

  • William Beem

    6/18/2012 5:13:55 AM |

    Unfortunately, ID provisioning is an expensive and time-consuming operation.  Maintaining disparate ID systems certainly increases operational costs. Modifying an existing user-interface to interoperate with different ID systems is certainly possible, but also creates additional expense for the operator.

    Quite simply, organizations who make changes like the one you referenced here aren't looking at the customer experience. Imagine it like a restaurant.  The people out front understand that creating a smooth customer experience is important for business.  The people in the back are trying not to get burned.  There have a completely different view of the business and make their decisions using the limited criteria they see.

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