Google wants to kick Flash to the curb in Chrome this fall

A new proposal from Google shows that the company is planning to ditch Flash for HTML5 by default in Chrome, whenever possible.

The idea is that, come Q4 2016, the browser will display HTML5 content for interactive experiences and video when it’s available and rely on Flash as a last resort – and in those cases, it will ask users if they’re okay with allowing Flash to run.

The proposal states that it will only serve Flash content by default for the world’s 10 sites that use the plugin – YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo, VKontakte, Live, Yandex, OK.ru, Twitch, Amazon and Mail.ru. This whitelist will expire after a year.

In addition, enterprises will gain policy controls to allow or disable Flash across all computers on their networks.

Of course, this is still a proposal and hasn’t yet been implemented, so we’ll have to wait and see if Google goes ahead with its plan to hammer yet another nail into Flash’s coffin – but it’s clear that the company is done with the bug-ridden tech that frequently puts users at risk of being hacked.

In February, the company announced that it will stop accepting Flash ads starting June 30. Last January, YouTube (which is owned by Google) began serving up videos in an HTML5 player in place of Flash.

Google isn’t alone: Adobe began distancing itself from its own beleaguered technology at the end of last year when it announced that its Flash content creation software would renamed to ‘Animate’ and allow exporting interactive media to HTML5.

via VentureBeat