While I do not claim to be an SEO guru, and am not a developer, I have been in this space long enough, and have enough web chops to know that the announcement made yesterday by Google and Adobe is not a step forward in the progression of the web. Here is why:
1. The "Because You Can" Syndrome Destroys Lives
a. Why do brand marketers and advertisers create experiences online?
- Well, sometimes it is to do commerce. Other times it is to create engaging platforms to immerse consumers, but neither of these reasons require a 5 minute flash intro to a brand site that has nothing to do with the core selling proposition for a given brand. All too often I run into people who do flashy things because they can- and not because they should.
b. Brand Marketers and Advertisers- read your bounce rates as they are the voices of consumers!
- I am not saying that pure flash environments inherently provide a poor user experience. What I am saying is that many who use Flash tend to exploit it to the point where usability it sacrificed. This is however something good taste can rectify :)
2. Open Standards Make The Whole World Sing
a. No one of us is as great as all of us (a good friend taught me that, you know who you are)!
- We have already seen what happens when standards are open. I hate anything that even remotely signifies a step away from open standards and the possibility for collaboration.
3. I Want To Keep The Dream Of The Semantic Web Alive
a. I long for the day when the World Wide Web is the World Wide Social Web. When things such as XFN, FOAF and Microformats are common place. I long for a day when the way our data is enclosed has meaning in it (in addition to the data itself). It seems that pure flash environments bring us further away from that dream