Starting today, Google Chrome automatically pauses ads built on Adobe Flash. That means the video and animation in Flash-based banner ads will stop working in the world’s most popular browser, while ads built on newer technology like HTML5 keep running without interruption.
This had been coming since a Google+ comment earlier in the summer put it bluntly: “Flash is a bloated, insecure battery hog, and it deserves to die.” Google isn’t alone in this either. Mozilla blocked Flash in Firefox the month before, until Adobe patched a set of serious vulnerabilities that had turned up in the internal documents leaked from the “Hacking Team” attack. Facebook’s security chief, Alex Stamos, publicly called on browser makers to drop Flash support entirely. Facebook itself has been quietly moving its own video away from Flash toward HTML5 and other newer tech.
Google pausing Flash ads outright is a big deal for the web industry and probably a healthy push toward everyone finally finishing the move to better technology. Which means it’s finally the moment to go back to clients still running Flash banners and tell them, with a straight face, that it’s time to stop.
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