In a brilliant move by Microsoft, HP will be installing Live Search on every new HP System! What is even more exciting, is that Silverlight, will be required to run the new Live Search. The Silverlight-powered toolbar will allow HP to customize the links on the toolbar to send users to various places on the Internet, and possibly launch other Silverlight/WPF applications for the user.
While most toolbars from my perspective are terrible and usually slow down the entire user experience, the idea of having Silverlight installed on every HP that ships to consumers is very powerful. While most users will probably remove the toolbar, not a lot of users will bother to remove Silverlight. This should quickly push Silverlight’s install base to at least some significant percentages in comparison to Flash. With the release of Windows Mobile 7 coming soon with Silverlight, Nokia announcing Silverlight support, and the Live Mesh beta testing going on as we speak, you can’t help but feel like something great is starting to coming out of Redmond. The sleeping giant has woken up to Web 2.0, and in a big way.