Adobe Flash support officially ending in 2020

In a public statement by Adobe last week, the software company has announced that it will be working closely with Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla to properly end the distribution of Adobe Flash and ensure a smooth transition to other standards. The company is citing the rise of HTML5, WebGL, and other open standards that have since matured and grown in popularity.

Conveniently absent from the press release is any references to the downright buggy Flash Player and near unanimous dislike of the Flash platform from developers. The late Steve Jobs made a then shocking announcement in 2010 about not supporting Flash on its iPhone and iPad series and other developers soon followed. It was a bold move by Apple especially when Flash was vital to many browser-based games and websites including YouTube in its early days. As of today, Flash is disabled by default on Edge, Firefox, and Chrome because it remains a popular avenue for hackers and malware even after all these years.

Adobe will continue releasing security and compatibility patches for Flash until 2020. If history is of any indication, however, this merely means that Flash will be the same as it always has been despite Adobe's efforts to plug up the many security flaws.

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