Microsoft loses MLB but keeps swinging
November 21, 2008, 1:55pm PST | Length: 00:01:17
ZDNet Senior Editor Sam Diaz talks about the recent announcement by Major League Baseball to drop Microsoft’s Silverlight service for Adobe's Flash player. Diaz says it's a setback for Microsoft but he doesn't believe the loss of business will have long lasting effects since the company has also signed deals with NBC and Netflix.
Transcript
>> For a while there, it seemed like Microsoft was building some momentum around Silverlight, the video streaming software that was supposed to challenge the established Adobe Flash player. Silverlight powered NBC's online coverage of the summer Olympics, it recently scored a deal with Netflix to stream downloaded videos, and the reviews for its Mac version were pretty favorable. But the big score seemed to be Major League Baseball, which was offering streaming clips of games over the league's website, until MLB pulled the plug that is. Baseball is going back to Adobe, and no one has really offered a reason why, at least not yet. Maybe it had something to do with Flash already being installed on a majority of computers, as opposed to Silverlight, which requires new users to download a plug in to play a clip. If you're watching You Tube, you already have Flash installed. Sure, it is a setback for Microsoft, but let's not count Silverlight out of the game just yet. Downloading Silverlight is a minor inconvenience, but once you do it, you're done. If that web video you're trying to watch is really worth it, you'll take the extra minute it takes to install Silverlight, Flash, or whatever else you need to start that stream.
