A big win for Silverlight--from the last place you'd expect

Microsoft's Silverlight has played a poor runner-up to Adobe's Flash in terms of player installation and usage ever since it was introduced, even with Silverlight powering NBC's Olympics video last summer. Today, however, Silverlight got another big win, and it's not something that will last for only two weeks. According to Engadget, Netflix just announced that it will finally bring its "Watch Instantly" streaming video service to the Mac, using Silverlight. One reason that Netflix went for Silverlight over Flash is Microsoft's Digital Rights Management platform, called Play Ready. I suspect that another reason is that Microsoft doesn't charge for players or servers, while Adobe still charges quite a bit of money for servers. Having Microsoft software as the preferred streaming platform for Macs is a bit of a shocker, but it apparently makes both business and technical sense for Netflix.