Summary: Microsoft uses Silverlight to overcome the 'nuisance' of Web standards while Novell helps it

OUR READER Goblin has written this short post about Microsoft's decline in the Web search market -- a subject which we wrote about some days ago. In order to survive on-line, Microsoft knows it must play dirty (or "aggressively") and our reader Oiaohm brought to our attention the following fragment from last week's interview with Microsoft's CEO:

Mr. ARRINGTON: Is Silverlight essentially competing with Windows? I mean, the way you described some of this here, it’s like they’re competing with each other.

Mr. BALLMER: No, it depends on what the strategy is. IE only runs from Windows. Anybody who uses IE uses Windows. So does it compete with Windows? No it helps Windows.

On the other hand, when we tell people the right applications which are not unique to Windows that doesn’t particularly help Windows. And so we’ll continue to see and do things that are standard-based because that’s important. And you continue to see us encourage developers to do things that run uniquely on the Windows platform. You know, with the new Silverlight, you can build Silverlight applications that are flash-like in the sense that they run across platform. But you can also do things which are even nicer which really narrow down and run only on Windows. And given that Windows is a billion units, you can afford to make optimizations as long as they bring value and do your applications that are Windows unique.

Get it? And what would be better than replacing Web standards with proprietary Microsoft software? Microsoft has longed for it for well over a decade. Novell and Miguel de Icaza's team are helping Windows by supporting Silver Lie as they do.

Microsoft will never support vector graphics in a standard way as long as it is pushing VML with Silver Lie as a substitute to already-established industry standards (OOXML has the same effect with VML). The creator of the World Wide Web has publicly denounced Microsoft for it and as IDG's Paul Krill now puts it, "Google asks Microsoft to support vector graphics on browser." From a separate IDG site we have this new report: [hat tip: Tony Manco)

Some seeds for overhauling web browser graphics were planted more than a decade ago, and Google believes now is the time for them to bear fruit.

The company is hosting the SVG Open 2009 conference that begins on Friday to dig into a standard called Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) that can bring the technology to the web. With growing support from browser makers, an appetite for vector graphics among web programmers, and new work under way to make SVG a routine part of the web, the technology has its best chance in years at becoming mainstream.

[...]

Google and various allies are working to change that — its Chrome browser along with Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari and Opera support SVG — and judging by the arrival of Microsoft as a gold sponsor of the conference, things could be turning around.

"Gold sponsor," eh?

Meaning they pay to stack it up...

The HTML Working Group at the W3C is already plagued by the influence of proprietary champions like Microsoft and Apple, who cause trouble to HTML using their software patents that they refuse to abolish, not to mention the lobbying against Ogg.

To Microsoft, no Web standards are allowed if they advance a network outside its control. For that reason, Microsoft and Novell will continue to promote Microsoft's substitute for HTML while pretending to support standards at the same time. ⬆

"There has recently been an exchange on email with people in the Office group about Office and HTML.

"In one piece of mail people were suggesting that Office had to work equally well with all browsers and that we shouldn’t force Office users to use our browser. This Is wrong and I wanted to correct this.

"Another suggestion In this mail was that we can’t make our own unilateral extensions to HTML I was going to say this was wrong and correct this also."

--Bill Gates [PDF]