News out of Adobe-land says that they’re working to make Flash files accessible to Google and Yahoo search engines. (What, no Microsoft? hmmm….)

This may sound like great news, but a few caveats to consider.

1. This is an announcement of intent, not an announcement of accomplishment. The techs haven’t achieved anything substantive, so don’t go crazy just yet.
2. If Google can crawl my Flash program, how can a search result deliver you to the precise place in my Flash program where your search term is covered? If they can’t do this, then this whole exercise is little different from delivering searchers to your home page because someplace on your site is the search term they are looking for — not helpful at all.
3. What does this mean for publishers protecting their intellectual copyrights for content/images within Flash files?
4. What will this mean for publishers whose servers will be further stressed by these new Flashbots?

I’m going to wait for more on this before forming a final opinion, but my first impression is that I’m not impressed. Yet.