Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ:ADBE) has announced that it is finally planning to kill Flash.
The announcement from Adobe says that the company will bring the axe down on Flash at the end of 2020. Until then, it will continue to support the program. This means that it will still release security and compatibility updates until 2020’s close.
Adobe is encouraging those that use Flash to migrate their works to other open formats, such as HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly. The company also notes that it will be bringing an end to Flash earlier in certain areas where unlicensed and outdated versions of the software are being distributed.
Adobe is also teaming up with a group of other tech companies to help bring Flash to an end. This includes Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), Alphabet Inc’s (NASDAQ:GOOG,GOOGL) Google, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Mozilla. Each of these companies have released their own statements on what will be happening to Flash on their platforms as it approaches the end of its life.
Adobe and the other companies are working to create strong support for developers to move on from Flash to other open formats. They will also be giving users the ability to control what websites Flash will run on.
“Three years ago, 80 percent of desktop Chrome users visited a site with Flash each day,” Anthony Laforge, the Product Manager for Google Chrome, said in a statement. “Today usage is only 17 percent and continues to decline.”
As of this writing, William White did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
