Tech

Microsoft Edge Update: Microsoft Joins Arch Rival Google In Blocking Adobe Flash Contents, Will This The Start Of the End Of The Adobe Flash?

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Software giant Microsoft is taking some bold action and following Google's lead in promising to block the ubiquitous Adobe Flash content by default in its newest web browser Microsoft Edge. The company is adding a feature to its Edge browser that will automatically block Adobe contents, similar with what Google has launched recently.

For years, the tech world has been predicting the impending death of the Adobe Flash, and the latest introductions from tech giants Microsoft and Google would only accelerate the death process and make that prediction real.

And so it starts the slow strangulation of Adobe Flash as Microsoft started to block Flash content in certain situations.

According to Microsoft Windows' blog post, the company is extending the functionality of the Flash content click-to-run in the Microsoft Edge browser, starting in the Anniversary Edition of Windows 10. It also encourages the transition to HTML5 in the Windows 10 Creator's update, which set for release next year.

The update will significantly reduce power consumption as the Microsoft Edge browser started to block unnecessary peripheral contents. Microsoft also added that the new feature will be able to effectively distinguish between peripheral content from central contents, which may include video or games.

Adobe Flash is well- known in the tech circle for its numerous security issues, it's a notorious insecure multimedia platform that a majority of today's web attacks are directed against. Malicious advertising is one big example of this Adobe Flash-based exploitation. Its entire life history is riddled with risk and lots of security problems. Every year, it required near-constant patching and update to fix a slew of the very serious zero-day vulnerabilities, the remote code-execution vulnerabilities, the denial of service and much more.

Google takes the first kill in Adobe Flash war
Google's first big Flash-killing move came last year when Google's video-sharing arm, Youtube, announced that it will stop using Adobe Flash as its default video player in favor of the newly introduced HTML5 standard.

And recently, Google has released the latest version of its Chrome browser, the Google Chrome 55, to address multiple Flash-based security issues and eventually kill Flash contents in favor of HTML5.
Google said it would start blocking Flash with the recent release of Chrome 55 and the upcoming launch of Chrome 56 next year, according to MacRumors.

During the update, all users will see HTML5 content by default and Adobe Flash blocked. Google is also encouraging the use of HTML5, which said to be much faster and lighter.

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