As the world's best athletes compete in Beijing, the summer Olympic games are setting the stage for a battle between Microsoft Corp and Adobe Systems Inc over the Web video technology competition.
Microsoft's Silverlight technology and rival Adobe's Flash format are currently locked in a race over who delivers the world's online video.
Using Microsoft's Silverlight, the NBC site offers a glimpse of what is possible with future Web applications. Its viewers are able to watch up to four videos at once or follow the action with an online commentary that runs alongside the video.
By building up Silverlight's user base, Microsoft is looking to win over developers who see Web platforms such as Silverlight and Flash as a new way to deliver powerful Web-linked programs incorporating rich graphics.
Currently, those platforms are mainly reserved for multimedia applications such as Google Inc's popular YouTube site, which runs on Adobe's Flash technology.
"It's quickly becoming a very popular way to build next generation applications. There's a lot of interest in capturing the hearts and minds of developers," said Jeffrey Hammond, an analyst at Forrester Research. "It'll be a big business."
Taking this situation in mind, Adobe's director of Flash product development Jennifer Taylor said, "We have a large and established customer base. There is no doubt in our minds that Microsoft is going after this space very aggressively, but we feel very strong and confident."
Historically, Adobe's developer tools have focused mainly on design and creating for the Web. Now, it plans to extend that to more traditional software development with Flex, a system to help developers create and deploy applications.
Adobe plans to take the next step with tools called Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), which allow programs to run on the Web or offline on a computer's desktop.
On the other hand, Microsoft is approaching Silverlight from the opposite direction. It plans to take advantage of its legions of outside developers experienced in writing for its ubiquitous Windows operating system.
The next version of Silverlight, being tested now and due later this year, will support Microsoft's .NET framework -- tools used by developers to create desktop applications that work on Windows.
"This is a logical extension of the investment that we've had in the development space for decades," said Brian Goldfarb, group product manager for Microsoft's developer division.
Microsoft introduced its first version of Silverlight a year ago, but Gartner's Valdes said the second version is the first real form of Silverlight since the inclusion of .NET support turns the technology into "very different animal."
(based on a yahoo.com article By Daisuke Wakabayashi)
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