Industry Moves: Microsoft Hires A Former Adobe Flash Evangelist To Pitch Silverlight
Mike Downey has spent the greater part of the last nine years singing the praises of Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) Flash. Now, Downey is singing the praises of Flash media player-rival Silverlight. Downey joined Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) earlier this month as a principal evangelist focused on Silverlight. Until February, he was a principal evangelist at Adobe’s platform business unit, which includes Flash. (Downey also worked for more than two years as a senior product manager for Flash, managing the integration of Flash into Adobe after Adobe purchased Macromedia in 2006, according to his LinkedIn profile).
In a blog post, Downey explains the reasons for his apparent switch of loyalties: “We all know that web technologies evolve quickly
"A challenge for Silverlight, however, remains adoption"
Silverlight is already on 33% of computers. I know that's nowhere near the 99% adoption rate that Flash has, but when you consider that Silverlight 2 has only been out for 8 months it's actually a pretty impressive number. Furthermore adoption rate isn't very important if you're developing a Line Of Business application, since the target users for LOB apps are generally more than willing to install a 4 MB plug-in.
Adobe can't foist Flash on you with Windows Update.
Microsoft can sneak Silver Bligh onto PCs by bundling it with Windows Live and foisting it with Windows Update.