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Google Search to stop supporting Flash content

Google offers its final goodbye to the once-prolific technology, which is already disabled by default in the Chrome browser.
Written by Stephanie Condon, Senior Writer

Google on Monday announced that Search will stop supporting Adobe Flash by the end of the year. In web pages with Flash content, Google will ignore the Flash content. Search will also stop indexing standalone SWF files. 

Back in 2017, Adobe announced it would stop supporting the once-prolific technology, and Google said it would remove Flash completely from the Chrome web browser by the end of 2020. As of Chrome version 76, Flash is already disabled by default. Microsoft, Apple, and Mozilla also announced their plans for retiring Flash in their respective browsers. Earlier this year, Microsoft detailed its plan to remove the technology from its Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser.

In a blog post, Google engineering manager Dong-Hwi Lee highlighted how ubiquitous Flash once was -- the Flash runtime was installed 500 million times in the second half of 2013.

"Flash, you inspired the web," Lee wrote. "Now, there are web standards like HTML5 to continue your legacy."

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