Things just got a little more interesting this morning with Adobe’s beta release of a series of online productivity apps.
The new products are a “suite of online services hosted by Adobe that you can use to create documents together and share them with others. It helps people get document work done faster, without email attachments or version confusion.”
In a related move, Adobe also announced that they’ve added Flash to Acrobat. Hmmm. I’m going to have to think a little more about my workbook apps.
WPF and Silverlight are continuing to get a run for their money. I admit I have a little bit of anti-Flash bias in me, but if Adobe keeps this up it’s going to fade away. Very interesting.
Now if Adobe only added handwriting recognition to their core for the whiteboard app and the like, I’d really be spinning.
Now if Apple and Adobe joined forces, this would be an amazing combination–something akin to a Google-level business would evolve–creating a massive frontal attack not to just Microsoft but to Google too. If the markets saw the wisdom of such a move, which I think they would, the combined venture I bet could achieve shareholder value that neither could ascend to alone. Is this likely? No. Both companies are highly independent. Of course, wouldn’t it be hilarious if Yahoo, Apple, and Adobe all joined forces? Hmmm.
Now what does all this mean for Microsoft Office, which I already think is in trouble on the “small” Office side? I think Robert Scoble puts it well, we’re talking about a new economics model: “Soon people just won’t put up with a Word Processor that costs hundreds of dollars and isn’t collaborative. They won’t put up with a presentation program that can’t deal with photos from Flickr. They won’t handle a sales database that doesn’t run in the Web browser.” If Microsoft Office wants to stay relevant they’re going to have to figure out a way of releasing a version of their products that cut costs by a magnitude. If they don’t do it, someone else will.