SAN FRANCISCO — A large part of the success of online video can be attributed to the widespread adoption of Flash, a rich media, Web plug-in application which is on nearly all of the world's computers.
Developed at Macromedia, which was then acquired by Adobe, the developers never planned for video as part of the program, says Jennifer Taylor, a former Macromedia exec now with Adobe.
Jen told me that the inclusion of the video codec in Flash Player 6 happened by "accident," a weekend lark by a developer. She says that she and her colleagues never anticipated the current success of online video.
She says in this interview that Flash Player 10, the latest version, is presently installed on 55 percent of the world's computers, making it the company's fastest software update. She expects it to reach 80 percent of the world's computers in the "relatively near future."
I interviewed Jen on Monday afternoon at Adobe's San Francisco offices.
— Andy Plesser, Executive Producer
Disclosure: Adobe Systems is a sponsor of Beet.TV
