User:RufousCAT/sandbox/AdobeHistory

Adobe Systems Incorporated is a company founded in February 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke who left Xerox PARC to develop and sell the PostScript page description language.

Main history
The history of Adobe began when Geschke and Warnock first met and start working together at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). There, they helped develop Interpress, a page description language which Xerox kept proprietary. This decision prompted Geschke and Warnock to leave PARC and found Adobe Systems Inc. in the late 1982. A venture capitalist named William Hambrecht gave the new entrepreneurs a personal check of $50,000 as contribution to the startup costs and later had his firm invest $2.5 million in Adobe. The company name Adobe originates from Adobe Creek in Los Altos, California.

Within four years, Adobe became a publicly traded company under the symbol ADBE on the NASDAQ exchange. Adobe has grown from a single-digit beginnings to a successful, major technology enterprise. After four years of operation, Adobe annual business increased significantly with sales figures from $2.5 million in 1984 to $80 million in 1988. The following describes important milestones in the history of the company.

1982 -1984: The Foundation and incorporation years

 * 1982. Charles Geschke and Chuck Geschke leave Xerox to found Adobe Systems in December 1982. The company name Adobe comes from Adobe Creek in Los Altos, California, which ran behind the houses of both of the company's founders. Together with Doug Brotz, Ed Taft and Bill Paxton, they created a simple language called PostScript that is put on sale in 1984. It was the first printing software that enabled users to print pages that included text, line art and digitized photos.
 * 1984 : Dr. Warnock served as President and Chairman of Adobe and then CEO for the following sixteen years. Although he retired as CEO in 2001, he still co-chairs the board with Geschke. Dr. Charles Geschke, Chairman of the Board Adobe Systems Incorporated, has served as chairman of the board since 1997. He previously served as president.

1985 - 1989: The Postscript years

 * After creating PostScript,  a revolutionary breakthrough in printing technology,  Adobe released digital fonts as Type 1. Then, Adobe Type Manager followed in response to Apple's TrueType. Later in 1996, it announced the OpenType font format in association with Microsoft.
 * In the mid-1980s, Adobe entered the consumer software market with Adobe Illustrator, a vector-based drawing program for the Apple Macintosh. Illustrator, which grew from the firm's in-house font-development software, helped popularize PostScript-enabled laser printers.
 * 1985 - Apple, Aldus, and Adobe joined into a strategic alliance. Their respective products: the Apple Macintosh computer and Apple LaserWriter, the Aldus PageMaker software, and Adobe PostScript printing technology transformed the publishing industry and helped generate pages in an integrated process.
 * 1986 - Adobe Initial Public Offering,  typographer Sumner Stone is hired.
 * 1987 - Adobe Illustrator 1.0 is released.
 * 1989 - Adobe introduced its flagship product, Photoshop for the Macintosh. Two years later, Photoshop revenues eclipsed those of Illustrator and established the Adobe brand worldwide.  The same year, Apple sold its 20% equity in Adobe, netting $85 million.
 * 1992 - Adobe Acrobat software and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) are announced.

1990 - 1999: The innovation years

 * 1991 - Photoshop is launched, Adobe Premiere  (Mac) was introduced, Adobe had 700 employees.
 * 1993 - Adobe introduced PDF, the Portable Document Format, an International Standard: ISO 32000-1:2008. Then, its Adobe Acrobat and Reader software suite is released together with Adobe Premiere (Windows).
 * 1994 - Adobe acquired Aldus (PageMaker),  the company revenues exceeded $500 M.
 * August 1994 -  Bruce Chizen is nominated   Chief Executive Officer of Adobe Systems. He led Adobe from a desktop software company to a technology platform provider for enterprises.
 * 1996 - Macromedia introduced Flash, Adobe moved into San Jose world headquarters.
 * 1997 - Adobe ranked no. 2 software firm after Microsoft, Macromedia introduced Dreamweaver
 * 1999 - InDesign released. For the first time, Adobe's revenue exceeds the $1 billion mark.

2000 - 2007: The expansion years

 * 2000 - Bruce Chizen became president and CEO; Chuck Geschke retires.
 * 2001 - John Warnock retired,  the number of Adobe employes reached 3043.
 * 2002 - Adobe acquired Accelio (electronic forms technology).
 * 2003 - Adobe launched Creative Suite,  Adobe Premiere was rebranded to Adobe Premiere Pro, Macomedia hosts first annual MAX conference.
 * 2004 - Adobe ranked 6th in Fortune Magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For”.
 * December 2005 - Adobe acquired former competitor Macromedia and included in its catalogue of products,ColdFusion, Dreamweaver, Flash and Flex.
 * 2007 - Adobe launched Creative Suite 3, Shantanu Narayen appointed CEO,  company revenues exceeded the $2 billion mark.
 * December 2007: Shantanu Narayen takes over as President & Chief Executive Officer. after Bruce Chizen retired in November 2007.

2007- present: The Cloud and Mobile years

 * June 5, 2009, Flash platform availble for Android.
 * October 5, 2009, Adobe Opens iPhone to Flash Developers.
 * November 9, 2009, RIM and Adobe united to simplify delivery of rich content and applications for BlackBerry smartphones.
 * October 2011, Adobe Systems announced the switch from a perpetual software license model to a software as a service model, for its software package intended for creative professionals.
 * November 5, 2011, Adobe Touch Apps Available in Android Market.
 * December 20, 2011, New Community Capabilities in Creative Cloud.
 * December 21, 2011, Adobe EchoSign Now Available on iOS Devices.
 * May 15, 2012 Adobe Delivers Web Experience Management in the Cloud.
 * May 6, 2013, Adobe interrupted the Creative Suite and replaced it with the Creative Cloud.  which was released alone on June 17, 2013.  Although this move faced substantial criticism, a survey by CNET and Jefferies revealed that most of the subscribers plan to renew.
 * September 9, 2013, The company announced the renewal of the Creative Cloud tools for Video : Adobe Premiere Pro CC, Adobe After Effects CC , Adobe SpeedGrade CC, Adobe Prelude CC, Adobe Media Encoder CC and Adobe Story CC Plus and introduced Adobe Generator - all-new solution for Adobe Photoshop CC and Adobe Edge Reflow CC.
 * April 8, 2014, Adobe Lightroom Mobile Brings Professional-Class Photo Tools To iPad.

Historic controversies

 * On May 16, 2014, Adobe Systems Inc acknowledged a day long outage that disrupted access to its subscription-based Creative Cloud including Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash. However, the interruption did not affect customers who had downloaded the package and were logged in. The service was restored the following day with Adobe's apology for system failure.


 * In October 2013, Adobe witnessed an important security breach in its system. A significant part of the source code of the company products was stolen  together with more than 150 million compromised customer records (IDs, passwords, encrypted credit and debit card numbers). Some of this information was then displayed online.  Adobe said that it alerted federal law enforcement authorities and its financial partners of the incidents.


 * On September 24, 2010 the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division filed a complaint in the US District Court for the District of Columbia against Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, and Pixar for violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. In this complaint, the DOJ alleged that these companies had reached agreements to eliminate competition. Later, a settlement was reached between the 64,000 plaintiff workers and the companies in a federal court in San Jose, California.


 * In April 2010, the Apple and Adobe Flash controversy originated from Apple's failure to support the popular Adobe Flash in its iPad browser. Apple's late CEO, Steve Jobs arguments were that Flash will eventually become obsolete with the introduction of HTML5.  This decision has prompted an inquiry by the U.S. Department of Justice into the Apple Flash policy.


 * Around August 2000, Adobe Systems and Macromedia engaged in a series of claims and counter-claims related to product patent violations which led to mutual lawsuits.  Then, In July 2002, Adobe and Macromedia reached an agreement that settled their disagreements.