Heh, this is really a matter of perspective. If you think the rest of the web was wonderful, then Flash was a turd floating in a swimming pool. If you think the web is a poorly designed shoddy mess, then you might think Flash was a raft keeping you afloat in the sewer.

HTML and JavaScript are so sloppy and incrementally improved by accretion rather than taste, I lean towards the sewer point of view.