Adobe brings Buzzword into the fold

Adobe is adding to its applications portfolio with the acquisition of Virtual Ubiquity's word processor, Buzzword (see previous coverage). Adobe was an investor in Virtual Ubiquity, which is a marquee application based on the company's Flash and will run on Adobe's AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) OS-independent Web platform.

The Buzzword acquisition marks Adobe's entry into the office suite that typically includes a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation program as core applications. SlideRocket, a Flash-based presentation program may be next if Adobe is serious about competing with Microsoft, Google, Zoho, Think Free, Lotus and others for the allegiance of users who spend time creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

Adobe will also introduce Share, a free file sharing service for publishing and sharing documents online at the Adobe Max 2007 conference in Chicago this week. Based on Adobe Flex, Share will include APIs so that developers integrate it with other applications to store and accessing files and create Flash-based previews of documents. Buzzword will also publish REST APIs.

Adobe's AIR platform, along with Microsoft's Silverlight, exist as rich application platforms that bridge the gap between the Web and the desktop. Adobe has the advantage over Microsoft of its Flash installed on the vast majority of systems.

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