



From the 'did the web really win?' files:

I've been blogging a lot lately about HTML 5 and its video component. It's a game changing element that is also competitive against the current pervasive web video technology -- Adobe Flash.

But what does Adobe think about HTML 5?

During Adobe's second quarter fiscal 2009 investor call, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen responded to a question from an analyst about what HTML 5 means to Adobe. Narayen is both supportive of HTML 5 as a standard that Adobe tools will support, while also being dismissive of the competitive threat that HTML 5 video might represent to Flash.

Narayen sees a real challenge for HTML 5 will be getting a consistent HTML 5 display across browsers, which is going to take a long time to do.



"It might be a decade before HTML 5 sees standardization across the number of browsers that are going to be out there," Narayen said on the call. "So clearly supportive in terms of making sure as HTML 5 is evolving that we will support it in our web authoring tools but from the perspective of continuing to drive Flash and innovation around Flash and rich Internet applications, we still think that actually the fragmentation of browsers makes Flash even more important rather than less important."