Microsoft is literally embracing rival products. The Redmond company is little shy about using Google for search, Mac OS X as an operating system and is increasingly getting ready for Linux, offering interoperability and support. Case in point: Silverlight 1.0. Silverlight is Microsoft's alternative to Adobe's Flash and the materialization of its vision of a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in designed to enable rich Internet user experiences. And the two key-words are of course cross-browser and cross-platform.

Currently Silverlight is supported on Windows and Mac OS X. And Microsoft offers the necessary proof. On its Microsoft Silverlight VPR: Image Gallery webpage, under the screenshots for the product are all taken in Mac OS X and using Safari. If the Redmond company wanted to transmit the idea that Silverlight is platform agnostic it managed to stop short of its purpose. A few images from within Windows and Linux would have done fine. Well at least Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7, because the open source operating system is yet a challenge for Microsoft.

However, the Redmond company is collaborating closely with Novell in order to offer Silverlight support for Linux. And in this context, Novell is powering the Mono project. "Silverlight is a popular new way to build and deliver cross-browser, cross-platform experiences on the Web," said Miguel de Icaza, vice president of Developer Platforms and leader of the Mono project at Novell. "Novell is excited to work with Microsoft to extend Silverlight beyond Windows and Macintosh to Linux with Moonlight, so Linux users everywhere can enhance their rich media and interactive experiences on the Web."

And just in case you were wondering about Google, well, you can search the Mono website with nothing more than the Mountain View's search engine. And that's simply a hit below the belt coming from Novell, a Microsoft partner. "Mono provides the necessary software to develop and run .NET client and server applications on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, Windows, and Unix. Sponsored by Novell, the Mono open source project has an active and enthusiastic contributing community and is positioned to become the leading choice for development of Linux applications," reads the introductory message on Novell.