Sure, there’s been a lot of haggling over Adobe’s future, who loves it, who hates it, and where it belongs in the mobile market.  But a sudden upsurge of acquisition rumors has perked up Adobe discussions (and shares) even more, as the week comes to a close.  A spotting of Steve Ballmer at Adobe’s office excited many investors of a possible Microsoft acquisition, but there doesn’t seem to be much cause for alarm here.

While The New York Times sent speculation soaring, AllThingsD tries to calm things down upon news that Adobe shares were up 11.5% to $28.69.

“Sure, it might be an interesting idea–kind of like AOL and Yahoo merging–but that’s not the case at this point either,” writes Kara Swisher.  “Of course, as is typical, the execs at both companies talk a lot–you might have noticed at lot of Adobe has a lot of software that is popular on the Windows operating system. So, they had a meeting!”

Swisher goes on to give a memo to the Times: “When there is an acquisition afoot–in my experience–it’s all private airplanes and law offices and not the company HQ visit by the very loud and very noticeable Ballmer, the exact polar opposite of a shrinking violet.”

Between the big players here, there’s certainly an interest in technology that brings an improved browsing and media experience.  Struggling for years to find a standard amongst these players has been another saga, which won’t be ending anytime soon, with rumblings of Google being a better fit for an Adobe acquisition.  Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins weighs in on things, noting the potential for *gasp! partnership instead of acquisition, saying,

“Kara’s probably right, to a point. I don’t see Google making the Adobe acquisition here, particularly since they’re strong advocates of HTML5 themselves (as an eventual replacement for Adobe’s flagship in Flash).

Just because Adobe and Microsoft weren’t talking merger, though, doesn’t mean they weren’t talking alliance.”