I think you are referring to Googles practice of not using the keyword meta tag for ranking.
That doesn't mean that google will not use the keyword meta tag for indexing, only that the key words do not effect the page rank.
The reality is that each search engine uses there own methods for judging a pages rank in the results.
using good keywords is still a good idea, since it will help with getting the page indexed in the first place, just make sure the keywords are actually relevant to the page content to increase the pages rank.
ranking issues start when the keyword and description meta tags are not relevant to page content.