It has been a long time coming, and we are not quite there yet, but Adobe Flash is about to die. The long, slow drawn out death of Adobe Flash will continue for another three years yet, with Adobe finally confirming that it will be pulling the plug by December 31, 2020. By then, all updates for Adobe Flash will stop and the we will all enter a Flash free age.
Until then, Adobe is committed to working with partners to ensure Flash remains as secure as possible and updates will continue until that time. However, Adobe is already trying to encourage businesses to start switching to other standards such as HTML5.
The decision to finally put Flash out of its misery was made because other platforms and technology have “matured enough and are capable enough to provide viable alternatives to the Flash player,” according to Adobe.
In 2005, Flash was on 98% of all computers, and even three years ago it was being used by 80% of desktop users on a daily basis. Today, helped in no short part but the serious security flaws in the platform and the switch to mobile devices from PCs, usage has fallen to just 14%.
Google is not supporting Flash anymore and has not done so for Android since 2012. Apple has never supported the plug-in on its mobile devices and Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Safari no longer run Flash content automatically. Even Internet Explorer will disable Flash by default in 2019, ahead of its official death date the following year.
Of course, just stopping updates does not mean that Flash will cease to exist. But given the rate that vulnerabilities in Flash are now being discovered, anyone still using Flash by 2020 will be wide open to attack as soon as the updates stop. However, by then there will be far fewer websites using Flash and fewer devices with the Flash plug-in installed.
The Internet will most likely be a safer place without Flash, but what will happen to all the hackers who are currently developing exploits for Flash vulnerabilities? They will not also decide to retire. Instead they will put their efforts into something else. What that is of course remains to be seen.
Three years may seem like an awfully long time, but there are still many businesses that continue to use Flash and have yet to migrate to other standards. Flash is still extensively used by educational institutions for training programs, while web-based gaming websites will also need time to transition.
Govind Balakrishnan, Adobe’s vice president of product development, pointed out the importance of Flash saying, “Few technologies have had such a profound and positive impact in the Internet era.” That is certainly true, but all good things must come to an end and few will be sorry to see Flash finally die. The end came long ago, but at least now there is an official date when the final nail will be hammered into the coffin.