Back in May Google told us they’d block Flash on Chrome but didn’t say when they’d start. Today, they outlined a timeline for their slow roll of blocking Flash and favoring HTML5 across the web. Starting today, Google will begin to block Flash for a small percent of users on Chrome’s stable build. By February, Google will have 100% of users blocking Flash content, prompting them to run Flash if the site needs to use the dying plugin.
What does all this mean? Flash video players, modules, and other content won’t play or work until you explicitly say to run Flash. Google isn’t the first to attack Flash; Facebook moved all their video players to HTML5 and YouTube has had HTML5 players for a couple of years now. Adobe, the creators of Flash, even recommend not using Flash.
The move from Flash to HTML5 is a no brainer – Flash is slow, uses a lot of resources, while HTML5 doesn’t need a plugin or use a lot of resources. Flash is still used for a lot of websites for uploading business cards to Moo, creating content, and consuming videos on some smaller sites. Soon we won’t ever think about Flash, which has been on its death bed since Apple refused to include the plugin on the iPhone’s browser.
Tell us in the comments below what you think about Google finally killing Flash for HTML5.