Certainly an interesting week, with Palm acquired by HP and Apple’s detailed response on why Flash is no go on their platforms. Along with the recent acquisition of Sun by Oracle, it is shaping to be a battle of giants in the consumer market. Now we have (in alphabetical order) Adobe, Apple, Google, HP, Microsoft and Oracle – each with its own platforms, tools and plans to get a piece of desktop, web and mobile consumer markets.

• Apple, Microsoft and (presumably soon) Google have their own desktop operating systems. They do not need to ask anybody a favor to be able to shape where they are going, and what they can run on it.
• Apple, Google and Microsoft have their own browsers. They do not need to ask anybody a favor to shape what can run in it.
• Apple, Google, HP and Microsoft have their own mobile operating systems. They do not need to ask anybody a favor to be able to shape where they are going, and what they can run on it.

Where does that leave Adobe and Oracle? Each is certainly a behemoth in the area of cross-platform consumer-oriented platforms. Adobe has Flash, Flex and Air. Oracle has Java and JavaFX. But do they control their own long-term destiny?