18 December 2007
How Google creates descriptions and snippets...

Although some believe the Meta tags are a thing of the past, we continue to use Meta tags and encourage all our clients to have proper Meta tags in place. It also seems Google and all the major search engines continue to use them for search listings descriptions in the natural listings area.

If a website does not have Meta tag descriptions then Google seems to use the sentenance that contains the searched key word(s) as the description. Therefore your Meta tags do still drive the search engines so take care to drive them right where you want them!