It looks like Adobe Flash's days are finally numbered

The writing is on the wall for Adobe Flash. Once an industry standard, the multimedia plugin is generally seen as a security risk and drain on overall performance today. Even Adobe itself is moving past it.

Now, as the open, slicker HTML5 standard has grown, browser makers have begun phasing Flash out of existence. Earlier this year, Microsoft and Mozilla outlined their plans for lessening the need for Flash in Edge and Firefox, respectively, while Apple - who arguably kickstarted Flash's downfall by not supporting it with the iPhone - took the big step of disabling it altogether by default in macOS Sierra.

Now Google is poised to finish things off. The company has been open about its desire to de-emphasize Flash in Chrome, the world's most popular browser, for months, and on Friday it confirmed the wheels are in motion to formally make HTML5 the web browser's default for everyone by October.

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If anything, as this chart from Statista shows, Google's move is somewhat overdue. While Flash was used in nearly half of Alexa's top 10,000 websites in 2011, that figure dipped to just 10% by October of this year.

Statista