Adobe: to sue or not to sue Microsoft, that is the question

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 21 November 2006 01:40

Your IT - Home IT

Conflicting reports on the Internet have arisen over whether or not Adobe intends to sue Microsoft following the results of an anti-trust probe by EU regulators. So, will they, or won’t they?

A Reuters report has suggested that Adobe may sue Microsoft over the results of an anti-trust investigation by EU authorities if the findings are not to Adobe’s liking, but a BetaNews report suggests that Reuters has gone too far in making this claim.

Adobe is struggling to discover how to turn its applications into advertising supported free software over the Internet, with Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen explaining in German that Google’s success with Picasa is something they cannot ignore.

However getting Photoshop to work through a web based interface would simply be too slow at this stage, claimed Chizen. Adobe are working closely with Google and other Web 2.0 companies using Flash to stream video over the Internet.

Adobe is also concerned that Microsoft wants to offer free PDF creation tools within Office 2007. Microsoft removed that capability from the Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh version of the new Office, although it was present, along with Microsoft’s own XPS format that effectively does the same thing as a PDF.

Microsoft now makes this feature available as a free download from the Microsoft Office Live website for Office 2007 users, giving anyone who wants it the capability for free, but not shipping it with the final Office 2007 product.

Given that Adobe sells many copies of Adobe Acrobat Professional to government, corporate and consumer users, many of whom simply wish to make PDF files and not necessarily use the advanced features of Acrobat’s PDF creation and management tools, it is no wonder they are concerned that PDF will just become yet another thing that Microsoft now gives away for free.

But Adobe’s challenges do not solely rest with Microsoft, as a number of paid and free alternatives to Acrobat exist on the web, especially if Acrobat’s advanced features are not required.

Acrobat itself is now an advanced, mature PDF creation tool, offering all kinds of functions and features for digital signatures, collaboration of sorts, the simple act of PDF creation and more, so it is still regarded as the premiere creation tool for making PDFs.

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds, for at the moment, it seems not even Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen is sure which path his company will take in the fight against Microsoft, who is day by day becoming a stronger and stronger competitor to Adobe’s own sprawling empire.