Adobe ADBE 455,23 -6,30 -1,37% has announced they will no longer release updates for Flash at the end of 2020. Flash has been around since 1996, then a product of Macromedia until 2005 when Macromedia (and Flash) were acquired by Adobe. 20+ years later, Adobe has announced the end of Flash:
Adobe, along with partners Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. MSFT 454,46 +2,87 +0,64% , Alphabet Inc.’s Google GOOGL 195,42 -1,24 -0,63% , Facebook Inc. FB 196,64 +0,99 +0,51% and Mozilla Corp., said support for Flash will ramp down across the internet in phases over the next three years.
Apple’s AAPL 251,04 +2,91 +1,17% decision not to support Flash with the iPhone was the start of Flash’s decline. Mozilla disabled support for the NAPAI Flash Plugin in the Windows 64-Bit version of Firefox. Mozilla’s refusal to allow the Flash for the Win64 builds angered many Firefox users, but started and encouraged the trend of discontinuing or limiting Flash support in newer browsers. Microsoft’s Edge browser which is standard with Windows 10 now blocks Flash by default (users can still allow an instance of Flash). Google Chrome has Flash built into the browser (not a plugin), but even Chrome is requiring user interaction to enable Flash content. A vast majority of developers have moved away from Flash to HTML5 as browser support began to decline.
via MSN