Flash has been around for years. At the beginning it was an easy way to add animation to your web pages. As the technology evolved, the functionality of Flash became much greater to allow for full programming and applications to be created using Flash and not just simple tweens and morphing text. But indexing the content of Flash files has always been a problem for the Search Engines (Google).
Google recently announced that they are improving the way that they index Flash files. They are now able to read and index the content linked to an external resource of an SWF file. This is very valuable in that the most powerful Flash applications utilize this technology to distribute dynamic content. Unfortunately up to now, that content was blind to Google.
Establishing a successful search engine that isnt named Google may seem impossible, but Microsoft is digging deep into their pockets and resources in an attempt to dethrone the search engine king. How deep? Microsoft has spent a reported 80 to 100 million in advertising dollars for Bing. That's a pretty hefty budget considering Google only spent 25 million throughout the course of last year. I know Microsoft is trying to establish Bing as a viable search alternative to Google, but will they succeed?