Can we have more big news to talk about in a single day? Oh Yeah! After Adobe’s Media Center news, it is the turn of Microsoft to announce unveiling of of new online media platform called Silverlight that is supposed to complete with Adobe Flash. Silverlight will work on IE, Firefox, and Safari browsers to start with and will have plug-in capabilities to deliver rich interactive applications maybe something similar to what Adobe Apollo does. Customers already working with the Microsoft solution include Akamai, Brightcove, Eyeblaster, MLB, and Netflix.
Some of the early concerns on the web talk about Adobe’s installed userbase, which is moot point since a single monthly patch from Microsoft will bring the plug-in onto majority of the machines across the world. After that the war moves on to the app and IDE capabilities. Adobe is definitely ahead of that as of now. Will see how Microsoft battles this threat, which is just one of the many the embattled giant faces right now.
