Flash has been a big part of how we surf the web for a long time, although most users are coming to the realization that it has far outstayed its welcome, largely because of security issues associated with it.
According to a 2016 survey published by Encoding.com (PDF), which tallied use by 3,000 broadcasters and content publishers for 2015, Flash was only used for 6 percent of web and mobile videos in 2015, mostly for banner ads and legacy browsers, down from 21 percent in 2014. That's great news, but there is one question of everyone's mind - what will replace it?
Currently it seems like H.264 is leading the pack for video codecs, the software that compresses and then decompresses video, as it makes up a hefty 72 percent of online videos. The H.264 format isn't anything new, however, having first been introduced in 2003. Some place WebM, a new format that's royalty-free, as the next major video codec. It has 12 percent of the market, and is the leading HTML5 video-delivery system for browsers like Chrome and Firefox.
H.265, the successor video coding format to H.264, is also growing in popularity, but it currently only makes up 6 percent of the market. It is also unlikely to grow as fast considering the fact that companies who use the codec have to pay a royalty fee, unlike with WebM. Of course, given the fact that the codec is able to reproduce content at half the bitrate of H.264, and has support from the likes of Netflix and Apple's FaceTime video-calling service, it is largely expected that H.265 will grow a lot in popularity.
Whatever becomes the more popular way to watch video on the web, what's important is the fact that Flash is almost gone.
