The ability to publish directly to PDF format from within Microsoft Office 2007 has been removed from the about-to-ship beta version of the popular productivity suite. The removal of the software was at the request of Adobe, and seems to be a reflection of a relationship gone sour between the two firms.
Microsoft and Adobe have historically played well together but are becoming increasingly antagonistic. Microsoft employee Brian Jones, a Microsoft Office program manager, wrote recently about this particular spat:
“I'm still trying to figure that one out given that PDF is usually viewed as an open standard and there are other office suites out there that already support PDF output. I don't see us providing functionality that's any different from what others are doing. ... This really is one of those cases where you just have to shake your head. Adobe got a lot of goodwill with customers, particularly in government circles, for making PDF available as an open standard. It's amazing that they would go back on the openness pledge.”
This situation is of importance in AEC because of the dominance of PDF, and the number of firms who are using it to publish complete project file sets, including drawings as well as Office documents. If Microsoft vs. Adobe moves from talk to action, it could destabilize the progress made so far. The DWF team at Autodesk must be clucking with glee, as Autodesk’s competing publishing format would likely gain from any negative change in PDF’s momentum in AEC.
It seems Adobe wanted Microsoft to charge extra for the Save As PDF capability, and Microsoft said no. After all, you can already Save As PDF for no charge in Open Office, the open source rival to Microsoft Office, as well as in many other software products. “In order to work around this, it looks like we’re going to offer it as a free download instead,” said Microsoft’s Jones. “At least that way it’s still free for Office users, but unfortunately now there is an added hassle in that anyone that wants the functionality is going to have to download it separately.”
Jupiter Research analyst Joe Wilcox says the problem for Adobe is that having PDF output integrated into Microsoft Office could impact Adobe’s bottom line. There would be fewer sales of Adobe Acrobat. Adobe is also concerned, Wilcox notes, because Microsoft is working on a competitive document format technology code-named Metro. Wilcox speculates that Microsoft could possibly limit the ability of Acrobat to work well with PDF, specifically to enhance its competing publishing format.
--RSN