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AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez

Another nail in Flash's coffin as Google plans to ban it from ads

Google will ban Flash-based ads at the start of next year, continuing its move to phase it out of its products entirely.

GOOGLE WILL STOP accepting display ads that use Adobe Flash from June this year and will ban them entirely come 2 January 2017.

The company said that both its advertising businesses, Display Networks and DoubleClick, will be switching to HTML5 entirely next year.

Flash video ads escape this ban, however, with Google saying they “will not be impacted at this time” but the message is to change formats sooner rather than later.

During the early days of the web, Flash was the main plugin used to run animations and videos on any site. However, issues with performance, battery drain and a continuously growing number of vulnerabilities and security issues meant it became a liability for users in recent years.

Smartphones and tablets don’t support it – back in 2010, Steve Jobs penned an open letter saying why he wouldn’t allow Flash on iPhone or iPad – either meaning its foothold is solely on desktop.

Google has taken other steps to remove Flash from its products entirely including blocking it on its Chrome browser by default back in September and changing the format for YouTube videos to HTML5.

Even Adobe, the company behind Flash, has started encouraging people to move on by asking “content creators to build with new web standards” like HTML5.

Read: Does your browser crash frequently? Flash could be the problem >

Read: This legacy software for the web is finally biting the dust >

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13 Comments
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute ©JP Foley
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    Jan 7th 2015, 4:11 PM

    The Mercedes F1 team have a 360 Video on their website from on-board their car. It’s pretty cool how it works as you can move the view anyway you want while watching it.

    15
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Brian Delivers
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    Jan 7th 2015, 5:49 PM

    while iphone users will still hold their cameras thr wrong way….

    14
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    Mute Mark Malone
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    Jan 7th 2015, 3:55 PM

    Now thats cool.

    7
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    Mute katie buttimer
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    Jan 7th 2015, 5:04 PM

    Exciting stuff

    4
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    Mute Diarmuid O'Connor
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    Jan 7th 2015, 7:29 PM

    Do we not gave enough degrees of stupidity already ?

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    Mute Tom Colgan
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    Jan 7th 2015, 9:29 PM

    Change is great. Can’t wait it’s gonna be interesting

    1
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    Mute Chris Murray
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    Jan 7th 2015, 6:49 PM

    This could revolutionise CCTV

    1
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute J. Dunn
    Favourite J. Dunn
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    Jan 7th 2015, 4:52 PM
    1
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