This is not news; but I’ve just come across Adobe’s end of life notice for its SVG viewer. Adobe was a key supporter of SVG, which is the W3C standard for vector graphics and animation embedded in web pages, until it acquired Macromedia and with it the rival but proprietary Flash technology. The demise of the Adobe viewer is a shame for SVG supporters since it was the best available. All very predictable, though I’m not impressed by the reason given in Adobe’s FAQ on the subject [pdf]:

There are a number of other third-party SVG viewer implementations in the marketplace, including native support for SVG in many Web browsers. The SVG language and its adoption in the marketplace have both matured to the point where it is no longer necessary for Adobe to provide an SVG viewer.

In this context “matured” must mean “critically ill”, with Adobe’s announcement the killer blow (though let’s acknowledge that SVG was making limited headway even before the merger). The real reason comes a little further down:

You may also want to consider converting your SVG application to an Adobe Flex® application.

It’s easy to understand Adobe’s decision, though let me close with a question. How much harder would it be for Microsoft to establish WPF/E, if the industry had settled on a W3C standard rather than the proprietary Flash?