In an unfortunate turn of events, Adobe has threatened an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft in Europe. That two American companies may have their fate decided by European bureaucrats is bad enough, but the underlying assumptions make it even worse. The dispute centers on two issues. First, Microsoft announced that it was adding a “save as PDF” option to its Office 2007 offering, but Adobe doesn’t want that to happen.
If I am not mistaken, Adobe has not threatened to sue Microsoft. Microsoft has said Adobe threatened to sue Microsoft as an excuse for removing PDF capability from MS Office. That is a big difference. Adobe would have no grounds for suing Microsoft anyway as PDF is an international standard, usable by anyone. Microsoft wanting to avoid open standards as much as possible to lock in their customers is the real story here. I have been using PDF for several years now thanks to OpenOffice. It is a joke that Microsoft puts itself forward as an innovator when they are so late to market with use of a very popular open standard like PDF or the more recent ODF. Thinking computer users should look elsewhere for software.
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Raining on Adobe’s PDF Party
Posted by: Sonia Arrison June 9, 2006 05:00 AMIn an unfortunate turn of events, Adobe has threatened an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft in Europe. That two American companies may have their fate decided by European bureaucrats is bad enough, but the underlying assumptions make it even worse. The dispute centers on two issues. First, Microsoft announced that it was adding a “save as PDF” option to its Office 2007 offering, but Adobe doesn’t want that to happen.