R.I.P. Flash yet again: Google announced that it will completely do away with Flash ads and plugins on its Google Display Network and DoubleClick Digital Marketing platforms by Jan. 2017, with plans to revamp both networks as solely HTML5-compatible.
In a post published on Google's blog, the company declined to directly state the purpose behind the pull, but highlighted that the shift will happen in two stages: by June of this year, a block will be put in place for uploading Flash into Adwords or DoubleClick, and by Jan. 2017, preexisting Flash ads will be unable to run at all.
Google's decision marks the latest in a long line of moves in an attempt to obsolete the plugin, the last of which barred Npapis — an old system that ran Flash — due to online privacy issues.
"In the past, many plugins were developed using an old system called Npapi," the a Google expert explained at the time. "Today fewer sites are using Npapi plugins and they have often caused security risks on websites."
On that particular official post, Google added that while Npapi plugins cannot be enabled on the company's platform anymore, they can still be used on different Web browsers, like Firefox, but who knows how long it'll be until the ad-ons are completely extinct — even the Mozilla-owned browser plans to get rid of them by the end of 2016 — minus Flash, ironically.
So, why is Google championing HTML5? The answer is pretty straightforward: the markup language is the same for both mobile and desktop browsers, among other things, making the HTML standard a much more streamlined experience to deal with on a day-to-day basis.
For the few fans of Flash on the more corporate end out there, no worries: the software will be kept in place for video ads for an indefinite period of time.
Source: Google
