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Google now warns iPhone users when search results contain Adobe Flash

Search giant Google added another board to Flash's coffin on Tuesday with the announcement that it would warn users searching from mobile devices — like Apple's iPhone or Android handsets — when the contents of a search result were "mostly Flash."

Rather than returning the website's description, Google will now tell mobile users that the site uses Flash and may not work on their device, before offering them the option to continue anyway. The announcement was first noticed by iClarified.

Google says that content which cannot be displayed on a mobile device — like Flash — is a "common annoyance" for mobile users. The company goes on to suggest that developers should eschew proprietary formats like Flash in favor of more widely-implemented standards such as HTML5.

"Fortunately, making websites that work on all modern devices is not that hard: websites can use HTML5 since it is universally supported, sometimes exclusively, by all devices," Google's announcement reads.

Apple's decision not to support Flash on its then-nascent iOS devices was a major point of contention even before late Apple CEO Steve Jobs penned his famous "thoughts on Flash" letter, with many panning the decision as short-sighted. The choice has since proven prophetic, however, with Flash's popularity waning thanks in no small part to developers' need to accomodate the massive popularity of the iPhone and iPad.