I'd like to see a guest post by Joe on why to use URL Rewriting. I have heard these are the two major reasons:

1) SEO (search engines like the cleaner url's better and/or they can prevent a search engine from dividing your page's rank up among several urls that point to the same content)

2) Longer lived links. You can rearrange your site's physical layout and the urlrewriter automagically points everyone the right places. This can be combined with the SEO reason up above because you don't have to reinvest in your page's ranks.

Is this all there is? Is there nothing more? Is it JUST about making Google happy? If so, what relevance does it have to, say, B2B Web Commerce where all users are authenticated and authorized to be there?

Besides, I'd just like to catch up with the "Intern". Man, guy would be my boss these days...