One of the knocks I have heard against Silverlight has been around how long will it take Microsoft to obtain the same penetration as the Flash Player and if not how long, how will they do it?

If Microsoft is able to acquire Yahoo!, it certainly puts them in a much better position to quickly drive adoption of the Silverlight plugin.  Based on Alexa traffic ranking, if Microhoo becomes reality, Microsoft will own 3 of the top 5 web properties on the internet.  Yahoo is ranked one with a reach of 28% of all global Internet users.  Live.com is ranked number four with a reach of 25% and  MSN.com is ranked number five with a reach of 17%.  Do the math and you  get 70% of all global Internet users visiting a Microsoft property every day!

Now of course, MS would have to integrate some Silverlight apps into the popular Yahoo properties, but really that shouldn’t be all too hard.