Microsoft plans to introduce competitive software to provide similar video sharing capabilities to Adobe System’s Flash.

The program is called Silverlight and will be used by companies such as Universal Music and Netflix. The software will help to create video intensive Web sites that will appear the same on most operating systems.

Microsoft is lauding the program as being more cost effective and easier for Web programmers to use than Adobe’s Flash, which is already on almost 98% of the worlds computers. Microsoft expects the program to encourage Web designers to use more Microsoft tools, a spokesman for Microsoft said.

Perhaps in response to Microsoft’s actions, Adobe announced that they are planning to introduce technologies to lower the cost of encoding Flash videos, said Michele Turner, an Adobe VP.

“Developing for Flash is dead on cheap,” Turner said. “We feel like we are way ahead today.”

Microsofts response? They said there were not enough website designers familiar with Flash.

“The explosion of media on the Web is not happening as fast as it could because Flash isn’t as good as it should be,” a spokesman for Microsoft said.

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