More Windows 8 scuttlebutt: it’ll apparently include a fancy PDF reader.

More Adobe-Google synergy: Adobe has released a version of its Reader software for Android. iPhone and iPad owners have third-party PDF readers but not an official Adobe one. Adobe does say that fans of other platforms should “stay tuned,” which brings up an interesting question: In the wake of the Flash mess, will Adobe shy away from Apple’s mobile platforms or redouble its efforts to do cool things on them? I’d vote for the latter response…

This is very simple and very useful: Google is now using the Web-based PDF viewer that I’ve been enjoying in Gmail to make it easier to view PDFs that you happen upon on the Web. You know it’s available when you see a PDF in Google Search results with a “Quick View” link:

Click it, and you get a nice view of the PDF that retains formatting and doesn’t require you to download the PDF (or even to have a PDF viewer installed on your computer):

Google says that more than half of the PDFs it’s indexed now offer Quick View, with more to come; others still provide only the not-very-useful, plaint-text HTML view. And I see some PDFs that offer neither Quick View nor HTML and must be downloaded and opened in a PDF application. Even in incomplete form, it’s awfully handy when you want to peek inside a PDF before you go through the bother of downloading it–or when you don’t have any desire to download it at all.