Google Chrome users hardly see Flash content anymore

The percentage of Chrome users that daily opens a page with Flash content, has dropped from 80% in 2014, to 8% in early 2018, according to Google's Director of Engineering in keynote speech at Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) held in San Diego last week.

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In July last year, 17% of Chrome users on a desktop computer visited a page with Flash content every day. A possible explanation of the fast decline is that many advertisers and videos have dropped Flash and now use HTML5 instead.

Adobe, the developer of Flash Player, announced last year it would stop supporting the player by the end of 2020. Flash has frequently performance issues and the software is also frequently targeted by cybercriminals who make use of the numerous vulnerabilities found in the software.

In 2015, Adobe already advised to stop using Flash. Nowadays, Flash is blocked by default on most browsers, instead they use click-to-play for Flash.

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From Chrome 76, scheduled for July 2019, users have to manually enable the plugin. From Chrome 87, Flash will be removed entirely.

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