Adobe gives Google, Yahoo better Flash search technology

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 02 July 2008 03:19

Your IT - Home IT

Google and Yahoo! are merely the first to gain access to the technology. David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of Adobe's platform business unit, said "we intend to broaden the availability of this capability to benefit all content publishers, developers and end users."

This technology also improves the searchability of rich Internet applications created with Flash, giving Adobe's platform another advantage over Microsoft's competing Silverlight.

Adobe claims more than 98 percent of Internet-connected computers have the Flash Player loaded. Consequently, Flash is often used for various elements of web sites, including the notorious 'skip intros'.

Skip intros are lengthy animations appearing on home pages, and are hardly ever watched. The name comes from the practice of incorporating a Skip Intro link that allows visitors to avoid a lengthy wait and move directly to the real content.