In yet another blow to Adobe Flash, Google this week said that it will stop indexing Flash-based content in websites in its search engine.
“Google Search will stop supporting Flash later this year,” Google’s Dong-Hwi Lee writes in a new post to the Webmaster Central Blog. “In web pages that contain Flash content, Google Search will ignore the Flash content. Google Search will stop indexing standalone SWF files. Most users and websites won’t see any impact from this change.”
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Flash is quickly disappearing from the web, thanks in large part to its diminished support in mainstream web browsers like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. Microsoft in 2017 announced its own schedule for killing Flash support, noting that the technology will no longer be supported in its web browsers “after 2020.” As of today, we’re in the final phase of that schedule, with Flash disabled by default in both Microsoft Edge and IE; if re-enabled, Edge will continue to require approval for Flash on a site-by-site basis.
“Flash, you inspired the web,” Dong-Hwi concludes. “Now, there are web standards like HTML5 to continue your legacy.”