Yesterday, Microsoft unveiled their latest attempt at breaking into competitor dominated markets: the new technology they claim is destined to supplant the now ubiquitous Adobe product, Flash.

The new platform has been dubbed Silverlight, and is claimed to be the all-singing all-dancing second coming of online media. Why is this such an important upgrade over current technologies, you might ask? The answer is probably put best by Microsoft’s own press release.

“Silverlight customers will also enjoy compatibility with the broad ecosystem of Windows Media-enabled tools and solutions, and the proven scalability and reliability of the Emmy Award-winning Windows Media technologies. At the discretion of content providers, Silverlight will also deliver digital rights management support built on the recently announced Microsoft PlayReady™ content access technology — with feature parity on Windows and Mac.”

Translation: Current technologies work too well with unrestricted and non-Microsoft formats, so we’ve made our own platform from scratch, based on entirely in-house technologies that will all need to be licensed. Yay DRM!

Not to be outdone, Adobe promptly unveiled their own new technology, which includes, among other things, you guessed it… Digital Rights Management. Ladies and gentlemen, the gloves are off.

So what format will come out on top? Personally I think Adobe has a severe territorial advantage on this one, as they own the core technology that virtually all online video playback revolves around currently, especially when you compare an upgrade to Flash with the prospect of replacing it entirely in favor of a new and largely unproven platform, to say nothing of Microsoft’s history with these sorts of technologies. (Can anyone say Windows Metafile?)

A few companies have signed onto the Microsoft bandwagon already, however, including, most notably, Netflix, who undoubtedly sees this as a possible way of smoothing out the rougher edges on their “Watch Now” streaming system, but in the end, I seriously doubt this will even make a dent into Flash’s marketshare.

Honestly, what I’d like to see coming out of Microsoft are some true innovations. The Office 2k7 interface was definitely a good start, but their attempts at making first an iPod killer and now a Flash killer honestly just make them look like they’re coming up a day late and a dollar short.