Minor correction: Mark Garrett is Adobe's CFO

I think it was a lame comment from Adobe given that we're so early in the life cycle. V.2 was really the first serious version - and it's only been out for 4 months.

While more options are good, I don't agree that having two giants like Adobe and Microsoft battle it out is necessarily good for the industry. The dynamics of oligopolies rarely result in better platforms for consumers and increased choice for developers. Just look to the American auto industry for a prime example of this.

Instead what happens is the big companies compete to see who can spend the most money getting the major players to endorse their platform. The little guys (and often the consumers too) get swept aside.

I certainly welcome Microsoft's first serious version of Silverlight, I just would like to see some other competitors come in and really shake things up.

"I certainly welcome Microsoft's first serious version of Silverlight, I just would like to see some other competitors come in and really shake things up"

How?

the key is getting the runtime adopted to a level that's widespread. Either you get there first (Flash player) or you're large enough to either push it as an OS update or need it on your extensive website presence (Silverlight)... or it has to be drop-dead compelling to have (no one yet)

a dark horse is using an existing application as the RIA runtime (Firefox, Google Chrome)

Adam ... thanks, I corrected the above to say CFO.

Why on earth is the CFO commenting on ubiquity or demand or anything other than how many CS4 licenses have shipped?

Personally I ignore comments like this. Of course someone from Adobe is going to state that Flash is so much better than Silverlight. Of course someone from MS is going to state that Silverlight is so much better than Flash. Such statements are common, expected and should be ignored. Let the numbers speak for themselves or listen to third party statements that have no obvious bias. And even distrust those to a degree.

People should just use the tool that best suits their needs. All this silliness over "my chosen platform is the best!" type statements just hurts the industry in the long run. Fanboys are just annoying and should be banned from all serious discussions over the pros and cons of a platform. In fact, ban high level management of the companies involved as well because they're just as annoying.

And what's with Sneath complaining about Adobe packaging AIR with Acrobat? So what? The first time I installed Silverlight was through Windows Update. I sure didn't download and install my copy of Internet Explorer. Pot, meet kettle.

i as a looooong time flash/flex developer plan to build at least one silverlight application this year, even if only to review and understand the technology deeper (although i am doing it with the intention of expanding my business)...

that should say somthing to other developers, it is time to stop listening to pr statemets and start learning for youreselves...

most of the time flash developers slate sliverlight quite heavily, i am personally quite disapointed by it...

i also hope to see both microsoft and adobe stop playing the feature race and start to try and understand what people really need...

Travis you are a liar a very very very big one, as of this date 27/2/2009 Microsoft DOES NOT offer silverlight runtime through windows update.

Silverlight:
Microsoft Windows,Linux and Mac OS X operating systems. Mobile devices, starting with Windows Mobile 6 ,Symbian (Series 60) phones and GNU/Linux.
Flash:
Windows (2000 and newer, Win9x no longer supported), Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X
Silverlight:
Usefull only for Microsoft applications
Flash:
Usefull for both Microsoft and Sun software applications
Silverlight:
WMV, WMA and MP3 media content across all supported browsers without requiring Windows Media Player
Flash:
FLV
Silverlight:
Animation - Silverlight supports the WPF animation model, which is not only time based instead of frame based, but lets you define the start and end conditions and it will figure out how to get there for you. No need to deal with matrixes like in flash. Also no need to calculate positions on various frames. It just works.Flash:
animation model is frame based.
Silverlight:
The debugging with Silverlight is simpler than with flash.

Flash:
The debugging with flash is harder than Silverlight.
Silverlight:
Silverlight lets you embed true type font information directly into your projects, and download that information with the Webclient object. Flash:
Dealing with fonts is fairly complex with flash.
Silverlight:
The development IDE for Silverlight 2 is Visual Studio 2008
Flash:
Adobe Flex Builder 3
Silverlight:
Rich set of development languages are available for Silverlight. Developer can use JavaScript as well as managed code VB.Net, C# for Silverlight development. The dynamic languages (IronPython, IronRuby, and Managed JScript) are supported too
Flash:
Only Action Script can be used as programming tool in Flash.
Silverlight:

XAML is declarative while ActionScript is imperative. Using imperative languages to build UIs goes back to the early days of DOS and Windows, when developers had to manage all of the API nuances when interacting with graphical panes.
Flash:
ActionScript is an imperative language, which brings itself the pitfalls of imperative languages when compared with declarative languages.
Silverlight:

"WCF. The ability to use: WCF basicHttpBinding, duplex binding and WCF REST services is huge. WCF allows architects to create a first class Service Oriented Architecture and it can be consumed by Silverlight clients. Adobe has nothing of the sort. Flash and Flex obviously can consume web services/REST services etc. However, the entire WCF framework gives Silverlight a big advantage
LINQ. Silverlight just like Flash/Flex are client side technologies. In the Web 2.0-3.0 days a good design is to minimize calls to the server and try to manipulate some of the data on the client. LINQ works inside Silverlight. It is a VERY powerful architecture option to be able to manipulate data structures fast and efficiently on the client rather than having to rely on the server. This gives Silverlight simply a huge advantage in productivity and architectual capabilities.
"
Flash:
flash is lacking this area. Flash can read data source in terms of XML or text from some URL and can use it.
Silverlight:

Web Services support for Silverlight Streaming:The services provided by Microsoft, called Silverlight Streaming, it allows users and developers to host their Silverlight content and apps with Microsoft, taking advantage of their extensive global network of datacenters and their content delivery network. Best of all, this service is free, and while currently it is only in alpha it allows users to upload up to 4GB of content, and to stream up to 1 million minutes of online video delivery at 700kbps, around DVD quality. Starting right now, you can build a total video content site using Silverlight at no cost. The future for this service looks good as they will incorporate Silverlight Streaming with the MSN Video ad network to allow you to easily monetize your video streams and participate in a revenue sharing opportunity with Microsoft while removing your distribution costs. There will also be a premium level of content delivery where you will be able to pay for higher levels of usage - the cost for this service is as yet unknown but expect it to be very low.
Flash:

There is not any such service provided by Flash to host the content and application with them. Because of the absence of any such service, building a video site based on Flash is not as cost effective as building a video content site using Silverlight. Moreover, because of the Silverlight Streaming service, the existing Video Content sites might be moving to Silverlight site.
Silverlight:
Additional Support for mobile devices with desktop and desktop browsers:Silverlight is supported by Windows mobile device as part of a new service that the NBL have built. Silverlight applications and media streaming can be run on a mobile phone - so Silverlight even at this stage is about more than just the desktop browser and desktop market. Silverlight may be seen soon on the Symbian OS too.
Flash:

Flash is not spread as across the vast majority of both desktops and mobiles platforms, as compared to Silverlight. Flash requires Flash Lite preinstalled on mobile devices.
Silverlight:

Silverlight does not require video codec to run industry standard videos like .WMV
Flash:
Flash does not support WMV at all. It only supports FLV (Sorenson Spark or On2 VP6 codecs) and MPEG4 (H.264 codec).
Silverlight:

Silverlight uses XAML. XAML is text based and can be output using a simple XML object.
Flash:
Flash stores its shapes using binary shape records. In order to write shape definitions, you will need to either license a 3rd party Flash file format SDK, or build your own. It isn’t too difficult, but it does require a bit of a learning curve.
Silverlight:

Silverlight supports scalable video formats from HD to mobile.
Flash:

Flash does not support scalable video formats from HD to mobile
Silverlight:

Silverlight supports Hardware-assisted editing and encoding solutions.Flash:
Flash does not support Hardware-assisted editing and encoding solutions.
Silverlight:

We have to use *.xap if we want to use managed code. .xap is just a zip but not plain text anyway.
Flash:
Flash does not have .XAP based presentation layer
Silverlight:

Silverlight provides End-to-end server and application platform.
Flash:
Flash does not provide End-to-end server and application platform.
Silverlight:
Media server licensing is cheaper than flash.
Flash:
Media server licensing is costlier than Silverlight.
Silverlight:
Silverlight supports Scalable full screen video.
Flash:
Flash does not support Scalable full screen video.

Silverlight:
Webcam and Microphone support it not there.
Flash:
Flash supports it.

There is an interresting attempt at implementing a LINQ-like API in actionscript 3, check it out here: LINQ to Objects for Flex in AS3