There's been a lot of frustration among web designers about Google's inability to read Adobe Flash files.
Their clients wanted a new, exciting, and rich media experience for their websites.
Flash has been the platform of choice to render the new multi-media pages.
In many cases, the SEO teams immediately tried to stop what is generally known as 'legacy migration'. The fact was, that while Google could index the Flash files themselves, they couldn't read them, potentially causing search engine ranking problems.
This forced ongoing compromises between those in the SEO groups and those doing web design.
Earlier this evening, Google announced the long awaited initiative to 'read' Flash. Adobe has agreed to provide their Adobe Player technology to both Google and Yahoo! and work with the search companies to begin to index the contents of Flash files.
The move will put Flash out in front of Microsoft's relatively new rich media competitor Silverlight, as more and more businesses and individuals begin to realize the importance of organic search engine optimization.
Updated 11:30 AM ET - An excellent clarification of how this will work can be found on Ryan Stewart's blog here.