Adobe Launches Online Document Collaboration Suite

Adobe quietly launched Acrobat.com earlier this week which the company hopes will change the way the world works together on documents, for the better. Acrobat.com is obviously Adobe’s answer to Google Docs.

The suite is starting with three applications:

Adobe Buzzword for creating and reviewing documents together.
Adobe ConnectNow for holding full-fledged online web conferences with up to three people.
The Acrobat.com organizer for sharing 5GB of files with others online, including the ability to convert 5 documents to PDF and embed your documents in blogs, wikis or other web pages.

The first thing you’ll notice about each of the apps is they look really sleek. It’s also clear that Adobe looking to further expand ways the pdf file format can be used with Acrobat.com. Pdf’s can be created and distributed from within a browser window just by dragging in files.

Erik Larson of Adobe says the aim is to provide free document collaboration services for individuals that will meet the needs of most people. These services will remain free even when we come out of our beta phase. Over time we will provide businesses with premium subscription services such as workgroup capabilities, administrative controls, more advanced document workflows and additional capacity. But in the meantime, we’re confident that our free services will provide great value to millions of users.

Acrobat.com is officially in beta which means you may see some odd things happen here and there.