ABBYY FineReader Online

History

2014: New ABBYY FineReader Online

On July 31, 2014, ABBYY announced the release of a new version of the cloud service for text recognition - ABBYY FineReader Online.

The product helps to quickly translate document and PDF images into editable electronic formats, while the user does not need to install special software on the computer. According to the developers, the updated ABBYY FineReader Online offers even more options for recognizing and saving documents, and working with the service has become easier thanks to the presence of a modern interface.

The pricing policy has changed:

• new flexible tariff plans,
• you can recognize a small number of pages for free.

Added the ability to recognize several documents of different formats and the software can combine them into one file to save time. In addition to the office formats used, conversion to ePub and fb2 e-book formats is supported, Microsoft PowerPoint - ppt.

2011

Service transition from ABBYY infrastructure to Windows Azure platform

In the fall of 2011, ABBYY transferred the service from the company's infrastructure to the Windows Azure platform. FineReader Online's user audience is approximately 250,000 people, which is about 10 times more than buyers of the traditional box version of FineReader. According to ABBYY itself, migration to the Microsoft cloud platform will reduce service support costs by one and a half times.

Aram Pakhchanyan, Director of the Data Entry Products Department at ABBYY, noted that the transition to the cloud will help ABBYY discover and master new markets, while replacing traditional products with cloud products will not happen, since everyone will occupy their niche. The transition to Windows Azure will allow ABBYY to release a new free product - ABBYY Cloud OCR SDK, based on FineReader source code and allowing developers to create their own customized OCR solutions.

"We have made a strategic choice for Microsoft's cloud platform. For us, the point in implementing cloud solutions on Windows Azure is primarily the ability to reach new segments that were previously unavailable, "said Aram Pakhchanyan. "For example, startups received an offer from ABBYY with a zero entry cost, which opens up a field for interesting experiments and expands the possible application of the technology."

FineReader Online Service Description

According to November 2011, FineReader Online is a browser version of the FineReader paid program for personal computers from ABBYY. Users visit ABBYY FineReader Online on average three times a month. More than 70% of tasks performed using the service are translated from JPEG format to Word. Other popular file formats that users upload to the service site for processing include TIFF, BMP, PNG, PDF and GIF. [1] FineReader Online allows you to convert document images to editable text formats. The service supports 37 recognition languages, including Russian, and is capable of processing multilingual documents.

FineReader Online users can also recognize photos of documents taken by digital cameras or mobile device cameras. In such images, the service automatically eliminates various disadvantages of images.

The online version of FineReader supports all popular graphics formats and allows you to save the result of processing in files of formats DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PDF, PDF/A, RTF and TXT. The service is available from a computer of any configuration to users of all operating systems without installing additional software.

ABBYY FineReader Online is mainly in demand by users who do not need to pay for installing FineReader if they need to recognize texts from time to time, and not regularly. Service users pay only for processing the volume of documents that they themselves indicate.

In recent years, many developers have released versions of popular personal computer programs in the form of online services available through a browser and not requiring software installation. The American company Google offers users a free online package of office applications Google Docs ("Google Documents"), which includes, in particular, a text and table processor, a graphics editor, as well as services for creating presentations, storing files and teamwork.

Since March 2011, Google Docs has been able to recognize text in 34 languages ​ ​ in user-downloadable PDF files, scanned images and photos.

In June 2010, Microsoft opened access to the Office Web Apps online office environment, allowing you to view, edit and create Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote files.

Online image tools were also introduced by Adobe Systems, the developer of the popular Photoshop graphics editor. In February, the Skolkovo Foundation announced its intention to allocate a grant of 475 million rubles to ABBYY to create systems for machine semantic analysis of texts recorded in natural language.

2010

Analogues of the service

It is worth noting that online services for text recognition already exist, including with support for the Russian language: for example, ocrNow!, where Abbyy is indicated as a partner, or newOCR. Recently, the ability to recognize text was added to Google Docs, however, without support for the Russian language.

The only Russian competitor in Abbyy is called the Online Ocr (onlineocr.ru) service. This resource also allows you to convert documents online without installing any software on your computer. In order to use the service, you need to buy the so-called loans. As stated on the system website, each credit allows you to recognize the text of one page of the document and convert it into an output format. The minimum order volume is 10 loans worth 5 rubles, the maximum is 300 loans at a price of 90 rubles. The service recognizes texts in 28 languages ​ ​ (data for 2010).

Differences from FineReader

[1] FineReader Online service allows you to recognize texts from PDF files, images, photos without having to install any software on your computer. You can convert files to Microsoft Word, Excel, TXT, RTF, or PDF formats.

The online service differs in functionality from the FineReader program. In particular, it is designed solely to perform basic scenarios: recognition and conversion. Editing the document, processing it after conversion, and a number of other features are not available in the online version of FineReader. If the user needs a professional solution for optical text recognition, he is invited to buy the FineReader Professional Edition.

Transition from Beta to Commercial

On July 15, 2010, Abbyy moved its online text recognition and conversion service FineReader Online from beta to commercial.

Audience

According to company representatives, since the launch of the service, over 70 thousand users from 175 countries have registered in the system (as of July 2010). In order to continue using the service, they will now have to pay for recognition of at least 10 pages of text, which will cost $3. The maximum volume of one order is 1000 pages and costs $70. For those who participated in the beta testing, Abbyy provided the last opportunity to recognize 30 pages for free, while only 3 free pages are available to new users when registering. The service recognizes texts in 37 languages ​ ​ of the world. Recognizing one page costs from $0.3 to $0.07, depending on the number of pages ordered

2009: Beta Launch

The beta version of the site was launched in July 2009. Then it allowed to recognize up to 50 pages of text per day. According to company representatives, only a narrow circle of users who are professionally engaged in IT and are well versed in the FineReader product were involved in testing this version. With their help, the company improved the product and in March 2010 announced a version for a wider range of users who were given the opportunity to process up to 10 pages a day.

Notes