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Adobe announced today that it will be finally killing flash in 2020. Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox have all been blocking flash for over a year now. Adobe showed the statistics that in 2014, over 80% of Chrome users were using Flash and now only 17% of users are using it because there are a number of alternatives now.
Apple was one of the first companies to block Flash when Steve Jobs announced the end of support of Flash on iOS back in 2007. Steve Jobs wrote an open letter named as “Thoughts on Flash” in which he explained why is Adobe not suitable for mobile devices. The reasons were:
- Adobe Flash is a proprietary product and Apple prefers open web standards.
- Flash has poor reliability, performance and security.
- Flash is an additional layer that slows down and sometimes holds back innovation.
- A number of websites are now using better video formats.
- Flash reduces battery life.
- Flash was built for desktop PC’s, not touch devices.
Now it seems like he was right. At the time of this letter, Adobe was very angry about it and accused Apple that they are denying users “the full range of web content.” But now, after 10 years, the company has announced that it will kill flash by the end of 2020. Here’s what one of the Adobe spokespersons had to say:
“We will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020 and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content to the new open formats,”
A number of online gaming and educational sites still use flash and all of the companies including Google, Apple, Mozilla and Microsoft are committed to support Flash till the end of 2020. Microsoft will remove flash by default from Edge by the mid of 2019 but will continue to support flash until 2020. Safari and Mozilla users will have to install the flash separately and will have to choose which website can access flash. Google Chrome will keep coming with flash pre-installed until 2020 but it is already blocking flash content by default.
The main reason behind the death of Flash is the lack of security. The end of support in 2020 by all companies is a warning to the creators to move to the new standards until then. Or they will simply be blocked out of the web.
Image — Wired
