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Adobe Breaks Silence on PDF support in Office 2007

We all know that Microsoft, fearing a lawsuit from Adobe, has completely scrapped PDF printing support from Office 2007.

While Microsoft bloggers were quick to criticize Adobe over the failure of talks on PDF support in Office 2007, Adobe has played the role of a silent spectator.

But today, we get to listen Adobe's side of the story.

Mike Chambers of Adobe has now come forward to explain Adobe's stance and why they are against Microsoft for including PDF export when such a feature is available in so many other programs including OpenOffice or Corel Office.
What is different in this case, is that unlike any other company or group implementing the PDF specification, Microsoft is a monopoly. As a monopoly, Microsoft is under legal constraints and can’t leverage those monopolies (in Windows and Office) to unfairly muscle into new markets.
Adobe also has fears that Microsoft entry in the PDF writer market will loosen the grip of Adobe over the PDF standard.
Even if they included perfect PDF export in Office, does anyone actually expect them to not slowly break or abandon updates to the feature over time.
This would result in either a fragmented standard, or users who can’t take advantage of new features as the standards evolve.

While the whole issue is about open standards and monopolies, it exhibits an interesting trend on how companies are using employee blogs as their PR deparments.

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