Flash and Flex continue to blow away Silverlight

Microsoft has been trying hard to get the world to care about Silverlight. Visit Microsoft.com and you'll be forced to install it if you want to stay on the site. Microsoft has also been out on the evangelism trail, talking up its Rich Internet Application platform alternative to Adobe.

As Tim O'Reilly writes, however, it doesn't seem to be having any effect, a fact confirmed by other data, as well. Silverlight is still a dog on the Internet.

Since Silverlight and the somewhat related Expression Web books started appearing in October, we don't see much trendworthy activity. We do see Flash selling 6-7 times the units as Expression Web, Flash experiencing a holiday bump and Flex increasing steadily.

Microsoft's response? "Just wait until Silverlight 2 hits! That's when we'll really become relevant!"

Maybe so. Microsoft always does better after a decade of trying. But for now, Adobe is trouncing it. Microsoft continues to lose on the web, in every fight it enters.