Chrome 53 will begin phase-out of Adobe Flash, Google says

A promised wind-down of Flash support in Chrome will start with Chrome 53, releasing next month, Google announced on Tuesday.

The browser update will block some specific applications of Flash, namely behind-the-scenes operations like page analytics, the company explained in a blog post. These are in fact claimed to account for over 90 percent of Flash on the Web, bogging down the performance of sites when compared with Google's preferred HTML5 format.

Chrome 55 — targeted for December — will default to HTML5 automatically, unless a website only works with Flash. Even then people will be prompted to enable the plugin on their first visit.

Google said it is still working with Adobe to optimize Flash, but it has also been gradually veering away from the format, for instance switching to HTML5 video on YouTube in January 2015. The company will block Flash ads entirely starting at the beginning of 2017, and Chrome already pauses less essential content automatically.

Flash has been derided not just for affecting speed and battery life but for being a major security risk, since it has regularly come under siege by hackers.

Apple is adopting a similar strategy with Safari 10, launching alongside macOS Sierra. The browser will not only default to HTML5 and require manual Flash activation, but display messages suggesting the plugin isn't installed even when it is.

23 Comments

zeus423 272 comments · 19 Years

About 8 years ago

I guess Flash will be gone in a flash. Too bad it's taken way too long for that flash to occur.

bsenka 801 comments · 17 Years

I'm always surprised at how wide spread Flash still is. I have to manually enable it on sites on a daily basis.

lkrupp 10521 comments · 19 Years

I chuckle when remembering the "real Internet" blathering when iOS premiered without Flash support. I don't think Jobs was ahead of his time on this (many tech people knew Flash was a dangerous feral hog that needed to be slaughtered) but he had the guts to actually do something about it. The very trolls that castigated Apple for banning Flash on iOS now bash Flash too. The hypocrisy is to be savored.

MacPro 19845 comments · 18 Years

Some one tell the BBC!

sflocal 6137 comments · 16 Years

lkrupp said:

I chuckle when remembering the "real Internet" blathering when iOS premiered without Flash support. I don't think Jobs was ahead of his time on this (many tech people knew Flash was a dangerous feral hog that needed to be slaughtered) but he had the guts to actually do something about it. The very trolls that castigated Apple for banning Flash on iOS now bash Flash too. The hypocrisy is to be savored.

Yes, and of course... those miscreant Flash supporters are nowhere to be found. For ages, criticizing, insulting, and otherwise swagging their superiority god-complex around as if they were the sole oracle for all things Internet. Just scurrying in a back-room corner hoping no one calls them out.

Flash still can't die fast enough. It's like the dismembered-knight scene in Monty Python. Just be gone with it.

Any site I come across that requires Flash I ignore from that point forward. To imagine the amount of fossil fuels burned to provide power to all those electronic devices that would shoot to 100% CPU when Flash kicked in. Damn... Adobe should be ashamed of themselves for continuing to support this bad dream.