>Animated GIF doesn't use much bandwidth. I

Bullshit, this is a HUGE file. Its 4 megabytes for whats essentially a few seconds of small extremely low quality video.

Again, mp4 or flash (even with the old flv based codecs) would be one tenth the size.

Again, gif is no web standard. Again, its owners were anything but open. Again, your hatred of flash and other alternatives is making you look foolish.