In the US, the Olympics are broadcast online using Microsoft Silverlight. The other day when I wanted to check on the Olympic Judo standings, I discovered 5 hours of video of the first men’s and women’s weight classes on www.NBCOlympics.com. Not just the standings, not just the highlights, but the whole day’s competition, down to judokas retying their belts between points and coaches yelling advice in multiple languages from the sidelines. In addition, there were video tutorials about Judo techniques (not new to me, but well done) and scoring (more than I knew before). I thought it was great stuff.Before I could watch, I needed to update my laptop to the latest version of Silverlight 2.0. It took less than a minute on my FiOS connection, it was free, and I barely thought about it. The questions I had to answer about my TV provider (also FiOS) and my local NBC channel seemed considerably more intrusive, but I was OK with those, too.In the New York Times, John Markoff has made a big deal about this being a conspiracy by Microsoft. I don’t see it: Microsoft and Adobe both made their pitches to broadcasters about their Internet streaming technologies last year, and the Silverlight win with NBC in the US was widely covered tech news in January. (Search for “silverlight olympics” to find these stories.) So how is this bad? Markoff says …for many industry executives who compete with Microsoft, the world’s largest software company, the Silverlight strategy recalls a federal antitrust case in which Microsoft was found guilty of using its market muscle to stifle competition from the Web. What do you think? Is the Olympics Silverlight video player a great service to fans, a plot for Microsoft to take over the world, both, neither, or something in between? Software Development