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Apple and Google have grown to be bitter rivals on several fronts, but they’re on the same page when it comes to making the web a Flash-less place. No wonder, considering Adobe is aggressively pushing the latest versions of Flash and AIR on desktop and mobile. Those technologies also look like primary contenders for an upcoming digital print store that should bypass the iTunes ecosystem.
A recent incident involving Google and Adobe revealed a brewing antagonism and Flash technology is at the epicenter of it. As Geek reported, a Google employee publicly accused Adobe of blocking the latest HTML5 specification out of fear that open technologies might replace Adobe’s proprietary Flash technology. An Adobe engineer flatly dismisses those claims as ridiculous speculation, accusing the Google engineer, who is also a member of the HTML5 working group, of “abusing the official positions to grandstand and promote proprietary advantage.”
Proprietary web technologies clash with search engines like google.com which had only recently begun drilling through Flash and PDF documents on the web so you can search their contents. The aforementioned comment and Google’s general stance indicate that the company prefers a Flash-less web. But it’s not just Google, ironically Google’s new rival Apple shares the same interest. Apple and Adobe are already at odds over Apple’s refusal to add the Flash technology to its iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Putting aside for a moment a rumor that Steve Jobs allegedly called Adobe “lazy,” it’s a fact that Apple dismisses Flash as both a resource hog and a major security risk.
Adobe claims that Apple is forcing all the content through the App Store so it can monetize it. That doesn’t mean that the company is standing still – quite the contrary, Adobe confirmed that the upcoming Creative Suite 5 will compile a Flash project as an iPhone app, allowing developers to easily port their Flash content to the iPhone. While Flash apps and sites won’t disappear overnight, Flash videos might become a thing of the past.
Google is currently experimenting with a HTML5-based YouTube player, a strong indication that the largest video sharing site on the web might get rid of the Flash player entirely. Apple is playing the waiting game, convinced that all online videos will eventually move to HTML5. This will benefit the iPhone and iPad because those devices will be able to play today’s Flash videos provided that developers transcode and embed them using the <video> tag.
A part of the Open Screen Project, Adobe will make the latest Flash 10. 1 player available on a number of mobile platforms in the first half of 2010. Apple’s iPhone was notably absent from the announcement. According to a Strategy Analytics analysis from January 2010, more than 250 million smartphones are expected to support the full Flash player by the end 2012, including Android, Symbian OS, Palm webOS, the BlackBerry platform, and Windows Mobile.
The Photoshop maker also has high hopes for the latest iteration of its platform-agnostic AIR technology. An acronym for Adobe Integrated Runtime, AIR is a cross-platform runtime environment for building rich Internet applications using Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, HTML, or Ajax, that can be deployed as a Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux desktop application.
The company announced at the Mobile World Congress that it will release Flash 10.1 and AIR 2.0 for Android, a major blow to iPhone because Flash and AIR developers will be able to easily deploy web apps that run outside the constraints of a browser to all Android devices. Adobe AIR includes specific functionality offered by mobile operating systems and devices such as multi-touch, gesture inputs, accelerometer, geolocation, and screen orientation.
Adobe says Apple isn't allowing Flash on iPhone OS devices in order to force all the content through the App Store, where it can monetize it. Pictured above: Apple's iPad browsing the New York Times homepage. Notice a blue lego cube denoting a missing Flash content.
Adobe is also pushing hard to make an AIR-powered reader a preferred platform for the re-packaged digital print content, such as interactive magazines, newspapers, and e-books. It is believed that a collaborative digital newsstand backed by five major magazine publishers is built around that technology. If true, Adobe could leverage Flash and AIR to beat the iTunes juggernaut in terms of emerging digital print products. This could be a major problem for Apple which is currently shopping the iPad around magazine and newspaper publishers who seem reluctant to cede control over digital print distribution to Steve Jobs.
