I share your disagreement with Group 3, and you never read any statement from myself supporting this position. Group 1 may be right or not, let's wait and see how this unfolds. Group 2 is a perfectly valid concern: a price hike of 100% is not a common thing, and a clear sign of market domination.What I see is:
- people who use Photoshop CC sahying an increase in price would be too much for them
- People who do not like the subscription model saying that they are abusing their market position for no other reason they are raising prices
- Some people who do not like the subscription model coming to the rather odd conclusion that what Adobe are doing is illegal
A price hike of 100% is neither a common nor a smart thing, especially from a company already making healthy profits off the product. What Adobe offers in return for the extra cash is apparently something only few people seem to want or need or are willing to pay for. Future will show how this ends.And you act as though they are the only company who do this. Almost every services company builds this into their overhead/cost calculation and would be dumb if they did not.
If you look at Microsoft, which also had an extremely dominant market position: people still put up with them on laptops and desktops, but flat out rejected their offerings in the smart phone and music player market regardless of merit. Microsoft still earns a lot of money with their server and desktop software, but unwittingly and unintentionally cut themselves off from large future markets.