Adobe Inc.

It offers a wide range of programs from web design tools, photo manipulation and vector creation, through to video/audio editing, mobile app development, print layout and animation software.It has historically specialized in software for the creation and publication of a wide range of content, including graphics, photography, illustration, animation, multimedia/video, motion pictures, and print.[3] Adobe was founded in December 1982[4] by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, who established the company after leaving Xerox PARC to develop and sell the PostScript page description language.[4] Adobe also has major development operations in the United States in Newton,[6] New York City, Arden Hills, Lehi, Seattle, Austin and San Francisco.[15] Adobe's first products after PostScript were digital fonts which they released in a proprietary format called Type 1, worked on by Bill Paxton after he left Stanford.Apple subsequently developed a competing standard, TrueType, which provided full scalability and precise control of the pixel pattern created by the font's outlines, and licensed it to Microsoft.[47] Carousel was a new application for iPhone, iPad, and Mac that used Photoshop Lightroom technology to allow users to adjust and fine-tune images on all platforms.Vast portions of the source code for the company's software were stolen and posted online[53] and over 150 million records of Adobe's customers were made readily available for download.[69] 2021 additionally saw Adobe add payment services to its e-commerce platforms in an attempt to compete with Shopify, accepting both credit cards and PayPal.[70] In July 2020, as the United States presidential elections approached, the software giant imposed a ban on the political ads features on its digital advertising sales platform.[75] Regulatory scrutiny from the US and European Union began shortly after due to concerns that Adobe, already a major player in the design software market with XD, would have too much control if it also owned Figma.[77][78][79][80][81] On June 17, 2024, the US Federal Trade Commission together with the US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Adobe for its subscription business model practice, citing hidden termination fees and the company pushing customers towards more expensive plans.[82] In June 2024, after facing backlash for its changes to the terms of service, Adobe updated them to explicitly pledge it will not use customer data to train its AI models.Adobe Media Encoder A microstock agency that presently provides over 57 million high-resolution, royalty-free images and videos available to license (via subscription or credit purchase methods).In 2015, Adobe acquired Fotolia, a stock content marketplace founded in 2005 by Thibaud Elziere, Oleg Tscheltzoff, and Patrick Chassany which operated in 23 countries.[85] A family of content, development, and customer relationship management products, with what Adobe calls the "next generation" of its Sensei artificial intelligence and machine learning framework, introduced in March 2019.[96] Observers noted that Adobe was spying on its customers by including spyware in the Creative Suite 3 software and quietly sending user data to a firm named Omniture.[102] On October 3, 2013, the company initially revealed that 2.9 million customers' sensitive and personal data was stolen in a security breach which included encrypted credit card information.[119] Because hackers acquired copies of the source code of Adobe proprietary products,[120] they could find and exploit any potential weaknesses in its security, computer experts warned.[124][125] Published on a server of a Russian-speaking hacker group,[126] the "disclosure of encryption algorithms, other security schemes, and software vulnerabilities can be used to bypass protections for individual and corporate data" and may have opened the gateway to new generation zero-day attacks.[135][136] The U.S. Department of Justice and the FTC filed a lawsuit against Adobe and two of its executives in June 2024, alleging that the company's deceptive subscription practices and cancellation policies violated the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act.According to the lawsuit, the company purportedly used small text disclosures, optional input fields, and complex web of links to obscure a concealed early termination fee.This fee reportedly amounted to fifty percent of the remaining value of annual contracts for users who chose to cancel early in the first year, resulting in significant penalties.