Flash's Slow Death Continues With Chrome 55

Google is continuing its plan to phase out Flash in favor of HTML5 today by launching Chrome 55. With this new update, many sites around the web will begin defaulting to HTML5 instead of Flash. There are a few exceptions, but Chrome 55 largely implements the measures Google laid out earlier in the year.

Google has been working to limit Flash over the past few Chrome versions, but it's in Chrome 55 where users will likely see the biggest changes. Once the update is applied, websites will default to HTML5 automatically, except in cases where the website only supports Flash. Those sites are exempt from the new rules, as are the top 10 websites, which are determined by Google's own internal rankings. Here are those top 10 websites:

YouTube.com

Facebook.com

Yahoo.com

VK.com

Live.com

Yandex.ru

OK.ru

Twitch.tv

Amazon.com

Mail.ru

While those sites don't need to fear the death of Flash just yet, it won't remain that way forever. As 9to5Google points out, these sites are only exempt for a year. By that point, the hope is that these Flash holdouts will have made the jump to HTML5. Websites are still able to use Flash to deliver content, but that now requires permission from Chrome users.

The move away from Flash has been prompted by security fears and the desire to see webpages load faster. HTML5 is better in both areas than Flash is, which is why we've seen a number of sites begin to adopt that as the default format for things like videos and ads. It wasn't that long ago that Twitch kicked off a beta test for HTML5, while other browsers like Firefox and Microsoft Edge are largely with Google in migrating to HTML5 as the standard.

Chrome 55 is launching today for PC, Mac, and Linux. The update for Android and Chrome OS will lag behind the desktop release a little bit, but Google says that those versions of Chrome will be updated shortly.

VIA: 9to5Google

SOURCE: Google