Read/WriteWeb’s Web 2.0 Summit coverage sponsored by Yahoo!
Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen is talking to Tim O’Reilly on stage now. Bruce says
that before the Macromedia acquisition, Adobe was a peripheral player on the Web
– so the acquisition
brought them back into the heart and soul of the Web. He talks about the
importance of Flash on mobile (Flash lite), which is key going forward.
Tim
asked him about Ajax and how it is taking over the use of Flash in some things.
Bruce replied that they don’t view Ajax as a competitor to Flash. He also says
they’ve believed in open standards from day 1.
On the challenge from Microsoft, Bruce said he’s pleased Google is “a
heat shield”. He says “the good news is that Microsoft has lots of
enemies”. He notes that Microsoft has been competing with Adobe almost as long as
they’ve been in business – e.g. Microsoft’s PhotoDrop product in the mid-90’s.
He says Adobe will focus on what they’re really good at – “making things
local”.
Tim mentions the electronic reading apps that both Microsoft (via
NYTimes) and Adobe have come out with recently. Bruce says the NYTimes Reader is
similar to what Adobe has been trying to do with PDF. Adobe are extending that
themselves with their Digital Reader. He says over the last 7 years they’ve been
talking about ebooks, but he thinks “we’re almost there” in regards to
ebook devices – he points to Sony Reader as an example.
Finally he talks a little about Apollo, which renders Flex and HTML etc both
within and outside the browser – “think iTunes on steriods”. Tim asks
whether that makes Adobe the “dark horse” of Internet platform
players, a question which is left hanging….
