Adobe Flash 10 vs. Microsoft Silverlight 2

Big week for Rich Internet Applications with two big releases: Microsoft Silverlight 2 and Adobe Flash 10. Both bring in new sets of capabilities that make the Internet a better place. So anything changes with this new release? should you look into using them, adopting, which one is better? Many questions, but the answer as always is ‘it depends’. I will list all features introduced by the new versions, but an important factor as it has always been, is adoption rate or market penetration. Adobe Flash Player 9 is installed on 97.7% of all computers, and Microsoft has not yet released their percentage…. They claim that Silverlight gets 1.5MM downloads per day (def inflated), but my guess is that they don’t have over 25% penetration with Silverlight 1.0. Adobe has demonstrated their growth rate and can guaranty that Flash 10 will be at 90% penetration within a year, my best guess is that Silverlight 2 won’t even have 15%…. so choose your product wisely, Adobe may have some better features, Microsoft may have others… but if you need anyone to actually see your site, use Flash. If you ever doubt this, remember what happened with the Olympics .