That was a nice lengthy read. While the GIF format itself is a bit outdated, I hope the artform of excerpting video/animation into a silent, short-loop never goes out of style.

Is it impossible to turn back GIF adoption? What if someone makes the equivalent of Steve Jobs's declaration against Flash? To me, Flash was far more vital to the very operation of web services. Then again, processing GIFs doesn't require near the same complexity or security risks as Flash did.