Iunno, I'm not necessarily defending Flash's merits to the end user, but for the developer, AS3 along with what the Flash API provides are in many ways more advanced than even the latest browser-native technologies. Keep in mind browser implementations of canvas, css animations, audio APIs, authoring tools are still far from standardized. Of course, I look forward to when the situation improves in the coming years, but it's hardly comparable IE6 in my opinion.