On every website you visit, if there is a document to download or an article to view, the Adobe PDF icon will be lingering around on the page somewhere. The PDF is everywhere online and for good reason.
Adobe’s made the PDF into a format that connects many of the tasks you need to do on a daily basis. But Adobe didn’t do it alone. The computer world is a dog-eat-dog world that involves big bucks and big names. In two words, it means mergers and acquisitions. And this is how Adobe has helped to keep the PDF format ahead of the competition.
So whether you realize it or not, these 9 acquisitions and mergers by Adobe have played an important role in your work.
1. OCR Systems Inc. (1992) OCR Systems Inc. provided the technology that gave birth to the question, ‘is it a native or scanned PDF?’ Their technology is what first made it possible to manipulate scanned documents into PDF.
2. Aldus Corp. (1994) This merger essentially brought PostScript--and hence the PDF, to the desktop. Creating, viewing, publishing. . . . Let’s face it, where would the PDF be without a desktop application to create one?
3. Accelio Corp. (2002) Digital forms users can submit are now a reality. Thanks in part to Accelio, the company’s server-based solutions technology is used in Adobe LiveCycle Design.
4. Yellow Dragon Software Corp. (2003) Now a combination of PDF and XML is being commonly being used for exchanging business data. Yellow Dragon, a maker of XML messaging and metadata software, palyed a key role in adding the backbone electronic business XML (ebXML) scheme to the PDF.
5. QLink Technologies, Inc.(2004) This merger contributed their Java-based workflow technology for building Intelligent document processing applications. Undoubtedly, you’ve probably already filled out a PDF form that has gone through a processing system built with the technology from QLink.
6. OKYZ S.A. (2004) Although not much detail was released about this acquisition at the time, OKYZ S.A. allowed Adobe to make use of the 3D technology that’s now a big part of its Acrobat line.
7. Macromedia, Inc. (2005) A big one. How big? So big that without it, it’d mean no support for Flashpaper, no mobile PDFs, no online collaboration, and worse, no media-rich PDFs. . . .
8. Trade & Technologies France (TTF) (2006) You wanted those 3D graphic models in PDF? Well, TTF provided the technology needed to convert 3D models to PDF with CAD translators.
9. FileLine DRM Division of Navisware (2006) FileLine DRM contributes to Adobe’s LiveCycle Policy Server that gives you the dynamic security control your PDF files use. Can you picture the PDF without the security it’s known for? I don’t think anyone can.
On the Adobe site, it says that around 10% of the file documents found online are PDFs. Now while that may seem like a small percentage, 10% of how many millions of online documents can add up to a very large number. With all the technology that’s added to the format, is it any wonder?
