Microsoft gunning for Adobe's PDF format?

[syngod]

When Bill Gates showed off the new Metro document format in Longhorn at a hardware conference last week, some analysts were quick to call it a PDF killer.

Indeed, there's plenty of overlap between Adobe's popular Portable Document Format and what Microsoft is planning to include in the next version of Windows. Metro is designed to do things PDF already does, namely to allow for the creation of files that can be printed, viewed or archived without needing the program that created them.

It's that omnipresence, analysts say, that Microsoft covets, laying the groundwork for a significant battle between the two formats.

"I'm sure this is a long-standing point of chagrin for Microsoft," said Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg. "Microsoft understands the power of controlling a document format. You wield quite a bit of power with that."

However the two companies have sought to downplay the competition.

Read the rest of the article at News.com.

 

[Nic]

yeh metro probably is like PDF coz microsoft just hate you using other peoples programs :) What kind of a name is Metro anyway,, sounds rubbish

 

[zRoCkIsAdDiCtInG]

yea they're freakin egotists, but hey microsoft will always be microsoft, tho i wish they added some style in like apple's metal window format, cuz that is hawt
even tho u can get apps that do that, why don't they just put it in?

 

[dtm]

Hope PDF wins the battle, as i'm sure they will...

Microsoft always want their own version of everything....

MP3 is great, oh wait heres WMA...
Google is great, oh wait heres MSN Search...

Arghh...

 

[syngod]

You can't blame them though, after all the Office document standards have provided them with a nice source of revenue so why not try to grab another possible cash cow.

Business wise I'd call it a fairly smart move, after all they can easily integrate it into Office and have it become another standard, where Adobe has to try and sell a standalone creation utility and then get people to download the Reader.

This may be one of the reasons Adobe picked up Macromedia, if Microsoft is going to push itself in on their document creation revenue, turn yourself into web creation behemoth and make your money that way.