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Adobe Flash is nearly dead as 95% of websites ditch the software ahead of its retirement

Clare Hopping Read more April 25, 2018

Fewer than 5% of worldwide websites use Flash, new information has revealed, with most websites favouring Javascript for running features.

Adobe Flash is nearly dead as 95% of websites ditch the software ahead of its retirement

Flash is used most commonly on Google websites, although there are some others, such as 6rrb.net, Monabrat.org and Intourist, also using it. Recently, Slate.com and Wappalyzer.com started using the tech, according to technology usage survey site W3Techs, which seems a rather counterintuitive move as pretty much every other website has stopped using it.

A year ago, just under 7% of websites were using the technology and, back in 2011, 28.5% of websites used Flash. Google’s own figures echo these. At a security conference in San Diego, Google’s director of engineering said the number of people viewing a page in Chrome with Flash has decreased from 80% in 2014, to less than 8% in 2018.

It’s this significant decline that has led Adobe to make the decision to retire its technology in 2020, because it’s not worth continuing support for it. Added to increased vulnerabilities in the software, one of which was known as CVE-2018-4878 and allowed North Korean hackers to exploit the technology, Flash is now being replaced by alternative technologies such as HTML5 and CSS3.

Even web browser makers are phasing out support for Flash, instead encouraging developers to use alternatives if they want their content to show on the likes of Chrome and Firefox.

When Adobe announced its decision to retire Flash, back in February, a spokesperson said: “Today, most browser vendors are integrating capabilities once provided by plugins directly into browsers and deprecating plugins.

“We will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020 and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content to these new open formats.”

It’s important to note that the majority of websites still running Flash are either dormant websites that haven’t been updated or that need significant investment to replace Flash objects with non-Flash features.