Imagine if there were competing flash runtimes. What if Adobe made “Adobe Flash”, Microsoft made MS Flash* and Google had it very own GFlash plugin. Three runtimes that all played .swf files in your browser, each competing with each other to be the fastest, the most secure, or the most efficient.
I’m pretty sure nobody would mind about Flash so much then.
Let’s not kid ourselves, nobody outside the FSF has an ideological problem with flash being “closed” software, and it’s not like Flash is the only way you can make annoying ads (you may have seen people mention BusinessWeek’s animated header-covering HTML5 animated ad). Nope, the performance is all John Q. Web User** cares about.
Meanwhile, browser makers are deadlocked in an arms race towards faster, more efficient and more stable HTML, CSS and JavaScript rendering so that they can compete for your business (that would be the fractions-of-a-penny that search engines pay them every time you use that built-in search field).
Earnest competition in an open market leading to a better product? Somebody call Maggie Thatcher!
* Silverlight is not the same as MS Flash for the purposes of this discussion, since it can’t play the same .swf files. ** Not that John Q. Web User cares nearly so much as John Q. Web Pundit, of course.
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