Microsoft Sides With Apple On Flash

After Steve Jobs very publicly and thoughtfully bitch slapped Adobe with his Thoughts on Flash essay, the web erupted in agreement, protest and every possible measure in between.

On Friday however, Apple gained an unlikely ally in it’s crusade against the old guard of web media. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer General Manager Dean Hachamovitch spoke out in favour of HTML5 as the future of the web.

With motives as suspect as Apple, if not more, Microsoft echoed Jobs’ thoughts on Flash’s reliability, security and performance. Hachamovitch also spoke of Microsoft’s support for H.264, the most popular choice for video codec in the HTML5 world.

“The future of the web is HTML5. Microsoft is deeply engaged in the HTML5 process with the W3C. HTML5 will be very important in advancing rich, interactive Web applications and site design. The HTML5 specification describes video support without specifying a particular video format. We think H.264 is an excellent format. In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video only.”

The elephant in the room is Microsoft’s own proprietary multimedia plug-in, Silverlight. Microsoft speaks carefully about the weaknesses of Flash while keeping mum on the topic of proprietary, closed formats.