Silverlight has a long way to go to catch up to the almost ubiquitous Flash platform. Flash has been around for over a decade, it’s on almost every Internet connected computer, and it has many established development tools.

Despite the huge gap between these two platforms, Microsoft seems to be making smart moves in positioning its technology. The Silverlight.net web site is very visually appealing and comes with an extremely impressive demo video (.wmv - 6min 36sec) created by Metaliq. Many people have suggested that Silverlight will be aimed at the .NET programmers instead of the creative types who prefer Flash. From what I see here, the visuals on this demo are on par with the best Flash applications out there today.

What I am really interested in seeing is how Silverlight fits in with Microsoft’s plans to offer a complete web-based version of Microsoft Office. If this version of Office is built on top of Silverlight then its adoption rate will go through the roof.

The features that Microsoft will be able to offer will probably force Google into looking at Silverlight competitors, Flash or JavaFX, for its web-based office productivity suite. Google has been using Flash sporadically across its services lately, but maybe its strong relationship with Sun will see a move to the JavaFX platform.

The long lived dominance of the Flash platform may be headed for some hard times.