I’ve received several emails from frustrated phone and tablet users over the past few weeks. Their favorite websites don’t come up on the mobile browser. The common denominator for all of those sites is Flash.
Adobe Flash is a web extension. It’s used to bring animation and automation into certain websites. Sometimes it’s appears as a video on a page, other times it can be an entire page.
The most annoying examples of Flash are those stupid ads that fold out or pop up on a page. But if you want to see the videos or use interactive features on a web page, you have to tolerate the ads. That’s because minus Flash, none of that stuff would exist.
You can find articles on various Android web sites as well as in the myriad support forums about how Flash is slowly being phased out of the mobile web browsing market. You’ll read urgent-sounding notes about how Flash is unstable or it’s a security threat and blah-blah-blah.
I’m not sure why Google (and Apple, for that matter) are so intent on getting rid of Flash. Many moons ago I would accuse them of being like the old Microsoft, which once disabled competing technologies by deliberately coding around such software within DOS or Windows. (I actually caught them doing so with memory management software back in the 1990s.) But I don’t think that’s the case.
Most likely, the issue is money.
Well, isn’t it always?
Flash provides web site services, services for which you could get a specific app on your phone or tablet. For example, you could access YouTube, Skype, and Google Maps by using a web browser. On your mobile device specific apps are available instead. To me, it’s obvious that Google wants you to use the specific apps, not the web. My guess is that a monetary reason exists for that desire.
Regardless, the bottom line is that if you want to use a service on the web that uses Flash, you eventually will be blocked from that service when you use the mobile browser on your phone or tablet. It’s inevitable.
Finally, a warning: As Google works to fully disable Flash you’ll probably see some “Flash” apps appear in the Play Store. BEWARE! My guess is that many of them will be malware — or worse. Avoid such solutions!
