Where's the PDF Development?

Though Adobe has passed PDF off into the public domain there are still active pockets of PDF development going on around the world.

Google's CHROME seems to have some active PDF development activity though the focus seems to be on making Chrome use non-Adobe plug-ins for PDF rendering.

There is also "PDF Quick View" when you do a Google search that turns up a PDF (probably in gmail and other Google products as well - but I don't use those...).  Its covered in this blog.  This seems to work well over all - its generally a lot nicer than fooling around with the Adobe plug-in to see something.

The sad part of all this, though, is that Google is too stupid to understand the full picture of PDF, the one that includes print.  (See this from Lone Wolf.) They only care about PDFs that fit into their model.  A little digging will demonstrate that they don't fully support PDF rendering yet.  I suppose they are working on it and one day will.  But as we have seen they don't get color or many other things that many of  us in the printing world know, love, and, most importantly NEED from PDF files.

Google is the king of ad placement - though I don't know if Adobe's exit from "PDF Ads" is good or bad in that regard.

More PDF activity is going on relative to SilverLight, PDF editors, and other tools.

There is also the ubiquitous http://www.planetpdf.com/ - though the forums and things there have not had much for years.

My fear is that without any sort of leadership PDF will become fully bastardized over the next couple of years.  By that I mean that no one will step in to fill the leadership vacuum left by Adobe's exit from that position.

Each company with its own ax to grind will pick up the parts they care about and ignore the rest.  Companies like Google will tear PDF apart faster than the rest because of their ubiquity.