Uncle Barry pointed me to this BusinessWeek article about Microsoft Silverlight and asked:
I wonder if you have any insights into this Adobe/ Microsoft rivalry that’s brewing here…
My take:
It is fitting that Microsoft is going after online video; the animation capabilities of Flash are nearly forgotten. But online video sites like YouTube successful are successful because of ease, openness, and excellent browsing and social features. Weakness in any of these areas will reduce a new offering’s ability to match up with existing platforms. Historically, Microsoft has bet against users when it comes to openness and failed to make a strong showing in social features.
Since Flash is bundled with the majority of web browsers, a visitor to YouTube doesn’t have to do any work to prepare to watch video; they show up, see thumbnails, and are off and watching videos with no fuss. Windows Media Player, QuickTime, Real, and other existing plug-in video players have stalled partly because they require some user preparation (however slight) AND have a fairly high start-up latency (time to stream the first several frames plus time to start up the plug-in). Real has a reputation for installing unwanted crap on your system (they’ve gotten better). QuickTime (on Windows) comes with a needless tray icon/startup program that makes your computer boot a little less quickly. Windows Media Player gets chunkier with each release.
Both Adobe’s Apollo and Silverlight Microsoft’s feature DRM as a core component of the offering. This will be unpopular with consumers, as it tends to be overly restrictive . The music industry is starting to figure this out , albeit slowly. DRM is insisted upon by many (but not all) large content providers, so the places to innovate here are in paring back DRM requirements and making legally-defined fair use possible without forcing the consumer to circumvent the DRM scheme. I’m not sure either Microsoft nor Adobe are looking in this direction, since most content providers are decidedly not .
Social features also matter. At launch, the hype around Zune leant heavily on the idea that you could share tunes over WiFi with your neighbors. The receiver of your offered tune could play it three times, after which the music would be deleted from their player, but kept in a “journal” to allow them the chance to purchase it from a Microsoft-affiliated online store at a later date. This hasn’t worked out as well as hoped, partly because the anticipated network effect never arrived , and partly because the feature didn’t work very well (scroll down to point 9), not to mention that it underscored the DRM situation and might have contributed to some confusion in that area . The restrictions that inhere to DRM tend to restrict both social sharing of content and browsing.
Content authoring is another issue entirely, but a space worth watching. Both Microsoft and Adobe seem to be trying to ride the popularity of online and portable video by selling (for money or otherwise) tools at either end of the value stream: the authoring software and the player. This sort of play tends to lead to closed systems, generally considered unfriendly to consumers. Meanwhile, the buzz from NAB is that Apple’s Final Cut Studio is still winning the content-creation-tool race.
UPDATE: I completely sidestepped Barry’s original question having to do with brewing rivalry between Microsoft and Adobe. I don’t have contacts at either firm, so I can’t comment on any real rivalry, but I’m not sure Microsoft entertains rivalries so much as they try to be a solid second-mover into rapidly-growing areas, attempting to crush or cannibalize (or purchase) whoever is in the way, in a relatively dispassionate manner. They likely won’t make money on the Streamlight player unless there is a cut of related purchases in there someplace, but they can make money on content-creation tools, hence the side note about such tools above.
