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The end of an era.
What you need to know
- Adobe will stop supporting Flash in 2020.
- Almost all major browsers already block Flash content by default.
- Google Search will also stop indexing Flash content soon.
It's the end of days for Adobe Flash. Once the dominant platform for interactive content on the web, it's being relegated to the history books by Adobe, with official end-of-life slated for the latter part of 2020.
As a result, Google is bidding adieu to Adobe Flash content, with the company's Dong-Hwi Lee penning a blog stating Google Search will soon stop indexing Flash content on webpages. The webpage itself will be indexed, and all non-Flash content will also show up in search results, though, so you don't need to worry about your old website suddenly disappearing. Standalone SWF files will be ignored entirely by the search engine. Lee states that "most users and websites won't see any impact from this change."
Flash's impending expiry date, alongside the well-documented security concerns pertaining to it, has resulted in most browsers blocking Flash content by default for a while already. Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Apple will all entirely remove the ability to run Flash content on their browsers by that date. As most people's gateway to the internet (Google Search) starts sweeping any and all Flash content under the rug, it will likely be the last nail in Flash's coffin. Soon, we may not even remember there was ever a platform for interactive web content before HTML5.
