Google vs. Apple

Remember the not-too-distant past when Google did Search and Apple made iPods and iPhones. They both had a minimalist aesthetic to their products, and both seemed to be obsessed with making computing simple and pleasant for their customers. Way back then, I thought a merger of Google and Apple could be the only company to take on Microsoft. Imagine their combined ingenuity and software running on Apple hardware accessing Google’s cloud services.

Then Google announced their own browser, and then a mobile OS, and then a desktop OS, and then a phone. Apple bought up a mobile advertising company. Suddenly, Google and Apple were waging a cold war. Google folks had to resign from Apple’s board. Verizon/Motorola were fighting AT&T in ads, which were really a proxy for an Android vs. iPhone showdown. Apple is suing HTC for patent infringement over their multitouch Android phones. Hell, Apple is even threatening to make Microsoft’s Bing its default search engine. That’s how stupid that is getting.

Adobe vs. Apple

Now let’s look at Adobe and Apple. They’ve had a rocky relationship from the start, but for creative types, Adobe and Apple went together like peanut butter and jelly. You wanted to do graphics work, you used Photoshop and Illustrator on a Mac. Right around the time when Apple switched to Intel processors, things got hairy. Adobe put creating Universal Binaries to support the new Apple platform on hold, and focused their attention more on their Windows products. Apple refused (and still refuses) to allow Flash on the iPhone OS, effectively creating a large chunk of web users (iPhone, iPod Touch and now iPad owners) that Adobe could not reach. The CEOs of the two companies are trading barbs via leaking company communications and tech blogs. That’s how stupid that is getting.

Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows

Not wanting to get blocked out of the burgeoning mobile market, Adobe countered in two ways. First, it partnered with Google to bring Flash to the Android platform. Second, it built a cross-compiler into its soon-to-be-released revision of Flash to allow you to create an application in Flash, and port it effortlessly to native iPhone APIs. Yesterday, Apple’s new iPhone Developer Agreement, effectively negated the latter by declaring all cross-compilers out of the terms of service. This is potentially a huge blow to Adobe. What is left for them to do? How about that partnership with Google?

On the surface, Google and Adobe have few interests in common. They play nice and partner in limited ways. But Google is all about the web as a platform, and Adobe owns many of the tools with which the content for the web is made. Right now, Google and Apple are aligned in that their strategies are built on the forthcoming ubiquity of HTML5 and the rich content features that are built into the standard. It promises to do away with the Flashes and ActiveXs of the world.

But imagine an HTML5 world where Google owned Acrobat (and the PDF format), Flash, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Air, Illustrator, AfterEffects and ColdFusion. Could anyone stop a combined Google + Adobe on the web? Would Apple be forced to capitulate? Would Android tablets with a Flash/Air-based development environment quickly eclipse iPad?

Even though a Google acquisition of Adobe seems unlikely, it does have intriguing implications. Regardless of how this shakes out, Apple now finds itself fighting a two-front war against very formidable opponents.