Adobe Launches Acrobat Office Suite

Adobe today announced the launch of Acrobat.com, an online version of the company's popular document-creation software. It's poised as something of a competitor to online office suites such as Google Docs, Microsoft Office Live, and Zoho Office. The new site joins the recently launched Adobe Acrobat 9.

Acrobat.com is built largely on existing Adobe properties such as Buzzword, an online word processing app acquired by the company late last year with the purchase of Virtual Ubiquity. The suite also features ConnectNow, a screen-sharing app that gives users a unique URL and the ability to take control of remote PCs.

Naturally, the site also features the ability to create PDF files, though that feature is severely limited for those who don't already own an Acrobat license: It allows the creation of five free PDFs.

Acrobat.com is currently available as a free public beta for users with Internet Explorer 6, Firefox 2, or Safari 2--or later. Users must also have Flash 9 installed on their browser.