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Google move signals the death of hated Flash advertising

The day that Steve Jobs prophesied back in 2010 in one of his most famous screeds is finally upon us -- the death of Adobe's (ADBE) Flash web format.

Beloved by advertisers, hated by users, security experts and pretty much everyone else, Flash is still all too common, especially on media sites. One survey found 90% of all so-called rich media ads -- the ones with videos or other moving elements -- relied on Flash in the first quarter.

But starting today, Google's (GOOGL) Chrome, the browser of choice for a majority of desktop users, will be effectively cutting off Flash advertising at the knees, ignoring those intrusive, battery-sucking, fan-spinning, auto-play videos and banners. (Now people will have to click on the ads to see them in Flash.)

Google's move follows a similar anti-Flash play by Mozilla, the third-most-used browser, and Amazon's (AMZN) recent decision to ban Flash-based ads from its ad network. Microsoft (MSFT) and its No. 2 browser, Internet Explorer, have long had a complicated relationship with Flash (though the company's new Edge browser includes built-in support for the hated format).

After years of sticking with Flash for desktop browsers, the big software firms and advertisers are suddenly getting scared straight by the prospect of ad blocking. People have been increasingly turning to browser add-ons that block advertising (and the creepy tracking and security vulnerabilities that come along with many of the ads). By preventing people from seeing ads, blocking software will cut off $22 billion in advertising revenue this year, up 41% from last year, according to a recent estimate from PageFair and Adobe.

Apple (AAPL), which never allowed Flash on the iPhone, has also stoked tremendous interest in ad blocking with its decision to allow the same kinds of blocking add-ons on the next version of its mobile browser.

That won't hurt Flash because it is already effectively dead on mobile web sites, but has led to an upsurge of interest in why so many publishers' web pages load so slowly and contain so much creepy tracking software in the first place. Ad-laden news sites are the slowest loading category on the entire web, according to research by Catchpoint Systems, with outlets like the Financial Times and Bloomberg requiring almost 30 seconds of wait time.

Increased use of ad blocking technology will create a "potential nightmare" for ad-reliant publishers, the Wall Street Journal noted this week, thus forcing the industry to move quickly to trim load times and cut back on its most annoying and invasive practices. Getting rid of Flash is just a start, though a good one. Just making the switch to format "rich media ads" in the more modern, secure and trimmer HTML5 format is a step in the right direction.

Shed no tears for Adobe. The company that once made its money selling tools for building Flash content now has plenty of apps to help publishers and advertisers build HTML5-compatible content.

"New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too)," Jobs wrote five years ago. The only real question left is what took so long.

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