Originally posted on July 24, 2007 @ 11:10 pm
We all know that Microsoft is a very jealous child. Time and again, it has proven that it is never content to just use a new and promising technology that other people developed. It always has to make its own version and, if possible, kill the pioneering technology. We’ve seen it with the Internet Explorer, with DirectX, its own Java version, right down to Xbox and the Zune.
Microsoft continues that “tradition” by opening for beta testing its Silverlight project. Silverlight is a multi-browser, multi platform plug-in that aims to become a delivery system for .Net based media content and other interactive applications for the internet. To put it simply, Silverlight will aim to eat the marketshare of Flash as well as some of the presentation elements of Ajax. It will also directly compete with Sun Microsystem’s JavaFX, which was actually released a few days after Silverlight.
I am keeping my opinions on Silverlight for the time being since I haven’t really immersed myself that much, and besides, it’s still at beta. But if this project does turn out to be a success, I am pretty sure that the other children in the playground will be complaining about what is, this early, already being conceived as bullying tactics from Microsoft.