IMHO, this has to do with one thing and one thing only – lots and lots of money. I would venture a guess that Adobe was never even invited to the dance. It has nothing to do with technical superiority, and everything to do with good ol' fashioned money (corporate nepotism?).

I think it's important to remember the scale of what we're talking about here. Microsoft has an unbelievably vast amount of cash. While spending that cash to hire engineers doesn't necessarily bring a product to market faster, or with more features, or whatever (Mythical Man Month), but it does make a lot of noise.

That money, and that noise is, over time, going to buy Silverlight a very large amount of downloads. I think we'd be kidding ourselves as developers if we didn't believe that some day, Silverlight will be among the most ubiquitous technologies available. In no particular order, Flash Player, Reader, Java, Silverlight, and of course the browser (which really makes all this possible in the first place). I believe that there's no stopping Microsoft's momentum once they've decided to enter a game.

That doesn't mean they're going to win the game however… Having a broadly available runtime is one thing, but there's a lot more that makes for a successful technology.

What tools are designers and developers using? Do they work in tandem? Did I learn them in college? What does everybody else in my discipline already use (data interchange)? Where can I get data for my content? And how easy does it connect to other technologies at the server? At the client? Is the infrastructure in place to solve my development challenges such as unit testing, logging, functionality testing, online/offline support, synchronization, mobile? Are all these technologies available to me everywhere I need them? Everywhere my customers need them? Mobile deployment? Operating system support (not just the runtime)? SEO? Accessibility? On and on and on…

I'm not saying that Adobe necessarily has all of these either, just that it's a lot more complicated than having a runtime.

Kevin Hoyt
Platform Evangelist
Adobe Systems, Inc.

I suppose it depends on where we get our news, LOL. FOX news is not my source for anything on this planet.

the DNC does have two camera angles as well.

obviously it's subjective, but to me, the official DNC site, and Olympics is a bit more impressive than Fox news.

I'm sure there's other sites using Flash too, but since they're not known, or talked about, the point remains, who knows but Adobe?

I have to agree with you, though, that even if Microsoft is giving a lot away by providing exclusive Silverlight video for the DNC and the Olympics, they certainly have people installing and talking. I mean, here we are talking about it. (Mind you, I steer clear of installing Silverlight on my systems for personal reasons)

Adobe needs to find a way to remind everyone that they have the superior, more mature product. I mean, no full screen video? Come on!

… at least now that Microsoft has a runtime so there's a choice.

so you've got Olympics deals to get more of an install base. Fair 'nuf. but that's just the process of laying the foundations on which to create applications (you ain't gonna write anything that won't play anywhere).

more important is getting the tools, the knowledgebase, the examples/samples/best practices, the evangelists out infront of developers. THAT's the gold. That's the real value in spending money to support product. And making the tools/platform enablers (eg LCDS for Flex) easy to access for developers (the install disc for every new copy of Apples OSx 10.5? RubyOnRail did this…)

ubiquitousness of the platform for developers, that's the key. Just ask PHP…

meh my 2c

I'm partly in the camp that no publicity is bad publicity. Silverlight has gotten a TON of people talking about RIAs and Adobe/Flash. We won't always win the battles (Olympics, DNC) but we're doing a great job of fighting the war. Worldwide our Olympics numbers blew Microsoft and Silverlight out of the water. We just need to be louder about it (but that's coming soon hopefully).

=Ryan
ryan@adobe.com

I think that Adobe's deals just aren't as publicized, and/or don't create a huge uproar of how users are being excluded. Check out the Adobe Flash/CNN sign in Times Square: http://www.lol.com/joke/show/204

oh yeah and Thanks! I'm really excited! I think it's a great opportunity!

true. she'd probably just say the internet is so neat she watched the Olympics on it. LOL Wait! She sends you those too!! I completely agree, I'm sure being a public company only exacerbates that problem of what to say, and what not, etc.

@Leif, don't get me started on CF Marketing ;)

@Ryan, yes, no noise, is worse (IMO) than bad noise.

I don't take it as an attack … In fact, I rather agree with your comment that the rest of the world isn't in the loop. There's multiple sides to the loop as well, but I like to think about it as consumers and developers.

Your mom may not know that Flash rocks, but by watching the Olympics on the Internet, she's probably not exactly going to tell all her friends about Silverlight either. It's just an enabler. That being said, she's probably sending you spam about the latest YouTube video she saw. I think that's an area where Adobe can focus on leveraging it's stack to build noisy applications, and I think we're doing a pretty good job so far (i.e. Photoshop Express, Buzzword and others like Sliderocket, Ribbit, etc.), though it's very early in the game.

The other part then is informing developers about what's available too, so they build these noisy applications.

This is a particularly challenging problem. Whenever we apply focused effort outside of our existing communities, those constituents (hey, the DNC is in Denver), become outraged, or simply just start panicking. As a ColdFusion developer, you can certainly appreciate this response (What?! Did he not mention CF in his Flex presentation?!). Let's say that the NBC Olympics guys are a .NET shop. What would be the response of the Adobe communities if we rolled in a ton of .NET features for Flex Builder at the cost of features for ColdFusion 9? Oh, there'd be noise alright, but hey, we got Flash on the Olympics over Silverlight. Yeah?!

Making noise outside the loop for both consumers and developers is an exceptionally challenging task when you have lead products with over a decade of baggage. Silverlight is free to do whatever it wants to, or feels is best, simply because it doesn't have to care about what anybody else says. That makes it really easy to make noise.

Kevin

http://is.gd/1Uz4