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The writing has been on the wall for a long time. Although Flash played a crucial role in the early days of the Internet – it was, for example, the standard way YouTube played its videos – it has become obsolete. Open web standards such as HTML5 have made it possible to embed content directly on web pages.
Even when it was still useful, it was far from being universally appreciated. When some iPhone users complained about the lack of Flash on their devices, making some websites unusable, Apple (AAPL) Co-founder Steve Jobs refused to back down. In 2010, he wrote a scathing open letter about the software, saying iPhones and iPads would never support Flash, which for years was plagued by bugs and security vulnerabilities.
It marked the beginning of the end. A year later, Adobe said it would no longer develop the software on mobile devices.
Flash Player has remained a ubiquitous desktop tool across multiple web browsers, with over a billion users just a decade ago, making it a particularly useful vulnerability for hackers. The software was a notorious target for hackers and resulted in numerous high-level security holes.
As HTML5 began to overtake Flash, its use declined. In 2014, 80% of Google Chrome users visited a site with Flash code. This figure fell to just 17% in 2017.
Adobe (ADBE) announced plans to discontinue support for Flash three years ago – and the program’s “end of life” day finally arrived on December 31. While some operating systems and browsers have already discontinued Flash, Adobe encourages people to verify that Flash Player is uninstalled immediately on their devices “to protect their systems” because it will no longer receive security updates.
The company has released uninstallation instructions for Windows and Mac users. Here is how it works:
- Download an uninstaller application for Flash Player. (There’s a different one for each operating system; and if you’re on a Mac, pay attention to which version of the operating system you’re using.)
- Run the uninstaller. (On Windows, you must first close all browsers and programs that use Flash. On iOS, you will do this as part of the process.)
- Then you can verify that the uninstallation was successful by restarting your computer and then checking the status of Flash Player on your computer from the Adobe website.
So long, Flash Player.
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