Why Google Will Stop Supporting Adobe Flash in 2020
People that use the web on a daily basis may have noticed a pop-up warning about the forthcoming removal of Adobe Flash Flayer next year. After all, the software, which is used to display interactive content, appears to have reached the end of its lifecycle and search engines like Google intend to remove support for its use by the end of 2020. Here at Internet Marketing Questions, we know how important Flash Player can be for certain websites and that is why we have decided to go over everything there is to know about preparing for the big change…
What is Adobe Flash?
In the early 2000s, a Flash Player plugin was necessary in order to load and interact with online content. After all, the multimedia software program is distributed as Freeware by Adobe and allows web users to watch videos, listen to audio or play online games whilst reaping the benefits of a high picture quality and a glitch free gaming experience.
The Decline of Adobe Flash Usage
In its prime, Flash Player had 500 million downloads during the second half of 2013, however, these figures have dwindled considerably over the past 6 years as less than 17% of desktop Chrome users rely on the plug-in in 2019. After all, HTML5 is more than capable of providing the same results as Adobe Flash Player which means that web developers do not need to rely on the software to display media content anymore.
The Removal of Adobe Flash
In 2017, Adobe announced that it would be removing support for Flash Player by ceasing to update and distribute the software program at the end of 2020. In fact, Adobe has been working with partners like Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook in order to smoothly phase out Flash over the past several years and it is even disabled by default in Chrome. As a result, Flash Player will be removed from all browsers on the 31st of December 2020.
Although Flash was once a critical piece of software that allowed content creators to display and implement images, videos, animations and games on their websites, it has been replaced by more updated web standards like HTML5, causing less downloads year by year. This means that SWF files, a site that is built entirely using Flash, will not be indexed at all whereas websites that contain Flash content will be indexed but the components that rely on it will be ignored. When it comes to internet marketing, it is vital that a website is up to date. To find out how the removal of Flash Player support may impact an SEO campaign, get in contact with a member of the SEO Enterprise team today!