Ding, dong, Adobe Flash is almost dead! With execs at major tech companies calling for Adobe to set a firm death date for Flash, Google has taken a more proactive step to push Flash into its grave. Ars Technica informs us that starting on September 1st, Google’s Chrome browser will start auto-blocking any ads that use Flash as their programming language. Videos that use Flash will still work on Chrome, however any “non essential” bits of Flash will be blocked.
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This is crucial because Flash-based ads are still a huge part of the reason why Flash is still alive. Blocking these ads might push advertisers to finally start coding in HTML5, which is the future of online video.
“While the move is largely a good one for consumers, advertisers won’t be so happy,” Ars Technica explains. “The vast majority of online advertising still makes use of Flash, even on mobile, where Flash has never been fully supported. A recent report by mobile ad management firm Sizmek claimed that advertisers tried to deliver more than 5.35 billion Flash ads in Q1 2015—which ended up defaulting to static images—versus 4.25 billion HTML5 ads.”
This is Google’s second major move away from Flash this year, as YouTube earlier moved away from Flash and made HTML5 its primary technology for delivering videos, which took away one of the last remaining strongholds of Flash’s relevance. Gaming website Twitch has now followed suit and Netflix is also using HTML5 to deliver video.
Flash’s death has been a long time coming but it looks like we’re now finally seeing enough momentum to make it happen.
