Could MS Take the Shine Off Chrome?
Microsoft has no plans to support Silverlight on Chrome - at least according to a post by Yi-Lun Luo on the Silverlight forums:
"Hello, currently we don't have plans to support Chrome. We will support it in the future if it gains enough market share. Please understand, each browser implements the plug-in model differently, so it'll be a lot of effort to officially support a browser 100%."
It would take the shine off Chrome if the new browser (intended for rich web apps!) couldn't run Silverlight. All kinds of speculative scenarios take off from there:
- Chrome adds routines to emulate FireFox just enough to trick the Silverlight plugin into running
- Google produces its own Silverlight clone (Twilight from Moonlight?), leaving Silverlight on the sidelines
- Google just sticks with pure JavaScript apps, cranks up the tooling support to make the platform compelling, and ignores Silverlight. All this to the glee of Microsoft-bashers
Chrome has gained a lot of fans in very few days. My view is that Microsoft will have no choice but to offer Silverlight for Chrome on Windows - and probably has a team looking at it already.