As Linux users we know how poorly Macromedia and Adobe have supported the Linux and non-microsoft/apple user base. The web continues to support Flash quite heavily while Adobe can sit back and do as they like (for a company and media dependency of that size - Adobe's forums are a joke). Furthermore, why have nearly all media infrastructure on the web run flash? I can think of a few benefits, but maybe you guys can point out more. How about Xvid!

For the record Adobe acquired Macromedia in April 2005. You can't really blame Adobe for the widespread use of flash on websites. It's those site owners that choose to use flash.

Don't know what are you talking about. Firefox can display flash when correct plugin is installed. And standalone flash players work under linux with Wine.

What? o_O
Flash is much more compact than streaming videos. Videos aren't interactive, and they don't scale well.
If it's not flash, then it should be *.svg or java applets, and both of them aren't real flash rivals yet. *.svg isn't wide-spread enough, isn't well-supported, and although writing interactive *.svg pieces of page should be possible, you will have to combine *.svg with javascripts, so you won't able to upload everything as single file.
And Java applets are way to complex for non-programmers.