Adobe Photoshop is the most advanced photo editor ever created, allowing millions of users from every corner of the world to manipulate digital images. Although it is distributed as a downloadable application, Adobe now aims to develop an online version of the product to increase the accessibility of the Photoshop image editor. TechCrunch reported the company will release the online service in six months and will be available for free but it will contain several ads displayed by Adobe.

"That's why all of these startups are going to be in serious trouble when Adobe releases a free, ad supported online version of Photoshop in six months. This announcement comes at a time when developers are lavishing attention on Adobe's Flex platform, particularly in the video editing and sharing space. I think it's reasonable for startups to question if Adobe will plan on competing with them in areas beyond photo editing. If that's the case, these startups may not want to spend their time and venture dollars testing out various products, only to have Adobe jump in the middle after all the dirty work is done," TechCrunch reported.

The announcement is very important for the Internet market because it comes just after the rumors about a potential online Office suite developed by Google are closer to reality. As you know, there are a lot of speculations that Google is preparing an online Office suite meant to compete with the one developed by Microsoft currently installed on millions of computers from all around the world. Although there are no powerful applications able to challenge Adobe's Photoshop, a free online based image editor will attract even more users looking to manipulate pictures. I guess Adobe will limit some basic functions to make the clients acquire the downloadable tool, a market strategy used in the past by many other companies.