Microsoft announced that Sky have launched their new online services, using Silverlight – the online video competitor to Adobe’s Flash. But is it significant enough?

Silverlight, although a great idea, will never have the wide appeal that Flash does – and the reason? Simply because Flash is already installed on the vast majority of machines. I don’t see why providers of online video or other media would see a benefit in using a Silverlight-based player – the risk to losing hits is too great at this point in time. The best way for Microsoft to get Silverlight on people’s machines would be if they started bundling it with Internet Explorer, but then that would be deemed anti-competitive. I guess it’s catch-22 for Microsoft’s Silverlight unless they can make bigger chips into Adobe’s Flash dominance.

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Posted in video by Paul Godden View Comments