New Analytics beta is Pimpin’ some Flash

More and more Flash is appearing in Google’s stuff. First, Google Finance adds a sexy Flash chart. Now Google Analytics openly uses Flash for its charting. Others follow where Google leads…

Is Silverlight really a good thing for the RIA industry?

It seems like every single blog in the world is welcoming the imminent arrival of Silverlight, and everyone seems to be predicting an increase of competition from its arrival. I’d like to offer an alternative viewpoint though…

Right now, in the RIA space there is a monopoly. AJAX doesn’t really count as a legit RIA platform, and Open Laszlo is propped (at least for the moment) on top of the Flash platform. There are lots of other little players too, some offering more than others, but none of them really live up to the abilities of Flash or the (promised) abilities of Silverlight.

The successful entry of Microsoft would form a duopoly. I believe that this will lead to an arms race of sorts, with each of the key players racing to get companies on board with their platform. Instead of an increased amount of innovation from competition, the two main players would simply fight tooth and nail to get the majors on their platform. No new innovation is likely to result here, as the two products have separate advantages and areas where the other cannot go. Adobe doesn’t make high performance Windows desktop API’s. Microsoft does not make design tools for the Mac, or more accurately, Microsoft doesn’t make design tools. For an example of how nasty this will look, just take a look at the two new DVD “standards”. That whole situation is just stupid, and nobody wins. XBox is HD-DVD, PS3 is blue ray, the studios are split on which formats. The main backers of each platform are pushing studios to do their platform exclusively. Innovation? Yeah, right. More like two giants taking turns smashing each other over the head with big bags of money and the last one left standing wins.

Still, there is no guarantee that this will be what happens in the RIA space. Because one player has a key advantage, what would normally happen is that Microsoft will fall in lock step with Adobe, cloning their features and trying to compete on price. Except Microsoft can’t do that. They can’t follow into the cross platform space and have tools that work on platforms other than windows and deliver on platforms on other than Windows. Microsoft Office and Windows still form the lion share of the companies revenue, and you just know they aren’t going to risk screwing that up to enter into a fledgling field that has no guarantees of being the next big thing. Ray Ozzie said in a dinner interview he had during the Mix’07 conference that they could focus and be really great on one platform (aka the standard Windows strategy), or they could focus on all platforms(aka Apollo) and be mediocre. So they really can’t clone Adobe completely because their biggest advantage, the Windows platform, is also their heaviest burden.

They say when competition happens, the customer wins. But in this case, the customers (developers), and end users could all lose. There will be two main plugins that will have no interoperability and will require separate installs and separate code bases. The last thing we need is an arms race between only two competitors, with end users being the ones that get tugged on like a wishbone. They don’t care about Silverlight versus Flash, they just want a better experience, and they want it to be seamless.