Microsoft IE Exec Agrees With Apple: Adobe Flash Has “Issues”

Now, this is interesting.

Microsoft (MSFT) appears to be taking Apple’s (AAPL) side in its dispute over Adobe (ADBE) Flash.

In a blog post yesterday, Dean Hachamovitch, general manager for Internet Explorer, laid out Microsoft’s stance on the issue. For starters, he writes that “the future of the web is HTML5,” a position consistent with Apple’s view. Hachamovitch also has nice things to say about H.264, a video standard that Apple likewise has been pushing as a better video standard than Flash.

“H.264 is an industry standard, with broad and strong hardware support,” he writes. “Because of this standardization, you can easily take what you record on a typical consumer video camera, put it on the Web, and have it play in a Web browser on any operating system or device with H.264 support.”

That said, Hachamovitch concedes that “today, video on the web is predominantly Flash-based,” and notes that “the ease of accessing video using just a browser on a particular website without using Flash is a challenge for typical consumers.”

He adds that Flash has issues, “particularly around reliability, security, and performance,” but that it remains “an important part of delivering a good consumer experience on today�s web.”