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Adobe reached out to snap up Buzzword, an online word processor, while Microsoft looked inward to find its Office Live Workspace. Who knew the ability to collaborate online over a corp-speak-laden memo or some other document would be so interesting to big tech companies? Adobe and Microsoft will push Google Docs and other firms offering Web-based document products.

The Adobe Max conference is underway, with Adobe's acquisition of Buzzword via a deal to purchase its parent company, Virtual Ubiquity. That firm built Buzzword on Adobe's Flex platform, and it runs in Flash.

Buzzword is doling out invites to try out the service. TechCrunch writer Erick Schonfeld tempered enthusiasm by noting a few of Buzzword's current and correctable shortcomings:

Buzzword’s drawbacks are that it is still slower than a full-fledged desktop application (not so much when typing, but when doing things like cutting and pasting); it doesn’t support hyperlinks (unconscionable for a Web-based app, though this is on Treitman’s to-do list); and there is no easy way to export a document to a blog or other Web publishing system other than cut-and-paste.

Microsoft's Office Live Workspace opened up the invitation acceptance process this morning. Unlike everyone else in the online docs arena, Office Live Workspace isn't about document creation.

Instead, Microsoft touted Workspace as the online companion to Office. Since Office represents a huge revenue stream for Microsoft, there has always been virtually no chance of them commoditizing the productivity suite.

Workspace gives the Office user a place to store documents online, and work on them from other computers. Amazingly enough, ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley learned from Microsoft that other software like OpenOffice or StarOffice will be able to use Workspace (though Microsoft Office will work best with it.)

Once Adobe has Buzzword in place, its users will be able to share documents just like users of Office Live Workspace. Adobe's creative team didn't spend a lot of time naming that functionality, simply calling it "Share."

Share's beta focuses on sharing and publishing documents for other to access. Access can be controlled so only a select list of people can view it, if desired.

The explosion of such products being offered provides a lot of choices for online collaboration. We have to wonder what will happen when such services reach a point of critical mass, and people begin to demand the ability to work with documents seamlessly across Microsoft, Adobe, and even Google and their web-based services.

Maybe that will be the next big product, a meta-product that lets the end-user treat all the big and little name online document services as neutral channels for content.