Will Google Launch a Flash and Silverlight Competitor?

In an extremely insightful post on it here, Gillmor guesses that Google has just made the first step towards creating a Flash and Silverlight competitor (Gillmor focuses only on Silverlight seemingly because so many in the valley love to hate Microsoft).

Back a few months ago, I thought it was an absolutely brilliant move when Microsoft struck a deal to only allow folks to watch the olympics if they installed silverlight.   Second, perhaps, to just making it part of the operating system, but we know where that gets you.  Now Google is requiring Gmail users to install their own common runtime (Gillmor presumes) in order to use thier new video calling feature they launched in direct competition to sites like Skype, TokBox, and free video chat service SnapYap.  They could have written this in Flash, but I’m sure their licensing fees to Adobe would be massive, and  Google probably took less in capex to develop their own code, they have the distribution channel, plus they can deploy a much richer experience.

As a developer, I’m excited to see what Google has coming. If you’ve ever looked at Adobe’s flex framework, it’s a mess. Coldfusion? Yuck. I’d take a google architected environment any day.

Will Google make the next step and require anyone who wants to view a YouTube video use Googliteflash?  They would certainly have overnight market penetration rivaling Adobe. Developer base?  Check.  Phone support?  Most likely.

This is going to step things up for Microsoft, and really hurt Adobe.

This post originated at the Online Marketer blog, home to marketing consultant John Coronella.