Adobe Assists Google and Yahoo Search Engine Indexing of the Flash File Format

This is a cool development – although, I wonder if I should now go back and think about what names (comments, perhaps?) I might have in ActionScript or unused symbols.

“Adobe is providing optimized Adobe Flash Player technology to Google and Yahoo! to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash file format (SWF) and uncover information that is currently undiscoverable by search engines. This will provide more relevant automatic search rankings of the millions of RIAs and other dynamic content that run in Adobe Flash Player. Moving forward, RIA developers and rich web content producers won't need to amend existing and future content to make it searchable—they can now be confident that it can be found by users around the globe.”

It amuses me that so far Adobe is excluding the most obvious other player in search: Microsoft.

“Is Adobe planning on providing this capability to other search vendors too? Adobe wants to help make all SWF content more easily searchable. As we roll out the solution with Google and Yahoo!, we are also exploring ways to make the technology more broadly available.”