Adobe’s Flash platform is no longer what it used to be. Granted it helped pave the way for the dynamic websites that we all know today, but these days it is pretty obvious that web developers tend to favor HTML5 more than Flash. In fact last year Google announced that they would be freezing non-important Flash files in Chrome, but this year could spell the death of it.
According to Google’s latest plans, it seems that the company will be looking to block Flash entirely within Chrome later this year, thus effectively killing off support for the platform for good as far as Chrome browsers are concerned. Given that Chrome represents more than 40% of the browser platform, safe to say that this will take the winds out of Flash’s sails.
However we should note that just because Google blocks it in Chrome doesn’t mean that it will no longer work. Users who still want to access Flash content can enable it back, although with more developers starting to turn away from the platform, we can only assume that there won’t be as high a demand for it compared to a few years ago.
Google aren’t alone in their plans. Earlier this year Microsoft made a similar move where less important Flash content in its Edge browser was paused, while Mozilla also temporarily blocked Flash content in its Firefox browser due to security concerns.