Remember this one, boys and girls?

About 99% of the time, the presence of Flash on a website constitutes a usability disease. Although there are rare occurrences of good Flash design (it even adds value on occasion), the use of Flash typically lowers usability. In most cases, we would be better off if these multimedia objects were removed… Flash tends to degrade websites for three reasons: it encourages design abuse, it breaks with the Web’s fundamental interaction principles, and it distracts attention from the site’s core value. — Flash: 99% Bad Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox 10/29/2000

And then, more recently (as Guy discussed a couple of weeks ago) comes this one:

For online reading, however, PDF is the monster from the Black Lagoon. It puts its clammy hands all over people with a cruel grip that doesn’t let go. — PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox 7/14/2003

At the time Jakob wrote the first column, Macromedia Flash was used pretty gratuitously for spinny-whirly-noisy effects. In the intervening three years however, Flash has been less abused and has become more respected for its ease-of-use and its enabling capacity for creating web-based applications. Also, in the intervening three years, Jakob Nielsen became a consultant to Macromedia.
Considering that Adobe and Macromedia are the main players in the digital design industry, as well as ferocious competitors in the courtroom, don’t you think it would be nice if Jakob made some disclosure of this potential conflict of interest? Especially since his two-issue tirade against the evils of Adobe Acrobat coincides with the release of Macromedia’s FlashPaper — a potential competitor to Acrobat’s position as the only kid on the block for online document distribution. And even further, since Jakob’s column trashing PDF is a virtual retread of a column he wrote two years ago.
It just doesn’t seem right to me. Especially since PlanetPDF allowed Adobe’s Robert McDaniels to respond point-by-point to Jakob’s criticisms when he first voiced them two years ago. To see how little Jakob’s criticisms have changed, look at McDaniels’ response to this round of criticisms.
Why is this whole affair so lame? I don’t know for sure, and I think it’s better to keep these opinions to myself. What do you think?