Adobe, Yahoo in pact to share products

SAN FRANCISCO: Adobe Systems Inc. and Yahoo Inc. said that they have signed a deal to combine Adobe services, like its widely used document-sharing program, with Yahoo's Web search functions.

The joint product allows a user to search for information in Adobe Portable Document Format, or PDF, documents -- the primary standard for sharing electronic files -- posted on the Web.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

A co-branded Yahoo/Adobe Toolbar has been launched, providing access to both companies' products, said Pam Deziel, a director of product marketing at Adobe, based in San Jose, California.

The toolbar, in the future, will let users convert Web-based content into PDF, Deziel said.

Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo's products include anti-spyware and pop-up blocker programs.

The deal immediately boosts the two companies' branding through the toolbar, Jupiter Research analyst Joe Wilcox said. He noted it was another step toward Internet searches involving more nontraditional Web content, like e-mail.

Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc., Yahoo's biggest rival in the search business, are each investing in technology that helps people search their e-mail.

Google, which recently released a desktop search program to search e-mail, has said it is working on technology to search text within PDF files.

Capturing and converting Web pages into PDF means HTML content can be taken offline for viewing, sharing and archiving, the companies said. HTML, or Hypertext Markup Language, is the language in which most Web sites are written.