In an interesting twist, according to geek.com, software giant Microsoft (News - Alert) now supports Adobe Flash technology on the latest Windows Metro browser, the Internet Explorer 10 (or IE10). The technology resource site wrote that in a surprising move, the software giant is integrating Flash player with IE 10 on Windows 8.

Two years ago, the software company stated that the future of Web video lies in HTML5. Even though Microsoft moved away from Flash in favor of HTML5, Web video continues to be delivered via Adobe (News - Alert) Flash technology.

Two years later Microsoft had to change its mind. “Shipping a totally plug-in free Metro IE10 may have given users additional incentive to check out alternatives like Google (News - Alert) Chrome,” wrote geek.com reporter Lee Mathews.

Although Microsoft has supported HTML5 for the last two years, the company continued to work with Adobe software developers. Now, geek.com learns that Adobe apparently offered the Flash source code to Microsoft so that they could integrate it with the Metro browser.

As a result, IE10 will ship with an integrated version of Flash Player, much like what Google and Adobe did with Chrome.

But the integrated Flash will not work on just any website. Instead, wrote Mathews, “it calls on a Microsoft whitelist to see whether or not a given domain is allowed to fire up the integrated Player. Big sites like YouTube, Facebook (News - Alert), Hulu and CNN will be on the list,” he said. “It’s safe to assume the list will grow over time, but right now it’s fairly short – and there are some glaring omissions like Armor Games.”

It’s not certain yet if integrated Flash Player would be included in Windows RT. Meanwhile, as per the geek.com report, Adobe is no longer interested in developing a mobile plug-in, but may be willing to get their hands dirty one last time for Microsoft.