I like to beat up on Flash a lot, but there’s no way to argue that it hasn’t delivered a ton of value over the years. Here’s Adobe’s John Nack arguing making the argument:
But let’s also be honest and say that Flash is the reason we all have fast, reliable, ubiquitous online video today. It’s the reason that YouTube took off & video consumption exploded four years ago. It’s the reason we have Hulu, Vimeo, and all the rest–and the reason that people now watch billions of videos per day (and nearly 10 hours apiece per month) online. Without it, we’d all still be bumbling along. Read the whole thing. (Via Webmonkey.)