Yesterday, Blackboard and ANGEL Learning announced that Blackboard has acquired ANGEL Learning systems, its last major competitor. In 2001, Blackboard had acquired Prometheus; WebCT was acquired by Blackboard in 2005.
From the standpoint of Blackboard, this merger makes a great deal of sense. In 2008, Blackboard’s market share in community colleges fell rather dramatically (I have not yet found statistics for other colleges and universities). The proportion of community colleges using ANGEL last year more than doubled, while the proportion of community colleges using Blackboard fell by about 3 percentage points and the proportion using WebCT fell by about 15 percentage points. The reasons for this shift are fairly obvious: ANGEL is substantially less expensive, has been more responsive to the instructional needs of faculty, is easier to use, offers substantially more features, and has displayed a remarkable record of innovation. ANGEL has been somewhat unique in providing new releases every year that include substantial product improvements and enhanced functionality. The only other company with close to a 5% market share is Desire2Learn, which has had its growth hampered by Blackboard’s lawsuits.
This move also makes sense for Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, who will be the largest recipient of the $95 million purchase price. The current recession has seriously damaged the budgets of most colleges and universities. This sale represents a convenient windfall in a time of very tight college and university budgets.
Will the Obama Justice Department allow this further reduction of competition in the LMS market? If you would like to voice an opinion on this, give the Networks and Technology Enforcement Section of the Justice Department a call at: 202-307-6640.
[...] http://economicalthoughts.wordpress.com/2009/05/07/the-death-of-competition-in-learning-management-s… [...]
Looks like enough folks have complained that Justice will indeed look into this. One official quoted in the Chronicle noted that we have a new administration in place that’s less likely to look kindly on these monopolistic acquisitions.
I keep thinking “Poor SUNY,” since Angel was such a progressive choice for adoption, and now that progressive option may be eliminated ex post facto.
Since LMS is a very helpful system nowadays, their will always be competitions. I just hope the competitions between these companies will soon end. LMS helped in many ways. I
eleapsoftware.com/
If we say business, yeah competition is there. I think it is very important to be just and to observe the uniqueness of each one so that there will be a clear reason if people or colleges would choose which better LMS they can use. The influence of government would probably help on having a healthy competition so they better take part. I have also known a learning management system that gives a very good service. Everyone will be aware! Thanks for this article! -Mariana-”web-based training”
“The only other company with close to a 5% market share is Desire2Learn, which has had its growth hampered by Blackboard’s lawsuits.”
It is indeed interesting how fully patents in the software industry hamper competition and technological progress. It is very easy for one firm to monopolize an industry when property rights are extended beyond tangible matter to the intangible–that is, to the very ideas developed in a human mind. Imagine that the Wheel was patented for a term of 20 years (which it would be, if it were first developed today). One would expect a rigid and powerful monopoly on oh so many things for that period of time.
Similarly, by obtaining these smaller competitors, it seems that Blackboard could easily solidify a monopoly position through the use of intellectual property. Perhaps the government will intervene and halt the merger. One however wonders if Blackboard, which I presume is a rather large company, has sufficient intellectual property to bankrupt ANGEL through legal means anyway; perhaps in that case this merger is better than losing the innovation of the ANGEL system altogether.