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Flash pronounced terminal, dead within two years
August 18, 2025
She’s had a good long life. Back in the pre-YouTubedays of the early 2000’s, Flash was the internet’s go-to medium for video content. FromAlbino BlacksheeptoeBaum’s World, it seemed Flash was everywhere you turned. Now, with the rise of video streaming services and the all-powerful gif-killer webm, Flash has become and cumbersome and decrepit medium that’s becoming less and less relevant. Adobe has announced that they believe Flash will be completely dead by 2018.
We should remember her as she was, however. After all, who could forget the enigmatic joys ofBadger Badger Badger Badger Mushroom? Still, with Android dropping Flash support all the way back in 2012, the writing was on the wall. A 2016 global media format report released byEncoding.comrevealed that Flash only represented six percent of mobile and web video in 2015. That’s a massive plunge from the 21 percent the medium held in 2014.
So what comes next? Well, the H.264 video codec has been around for 13 years, and it’s still going strong. As of 2016, the codec is responsible for fully 72 percent of online videos. However, the International Telecommunications Union is looking to succeed H.264 with H.265, also called HEVC. Right now it only represents six percent of the market, and it’s getting trounced by WebM which, unlike HEVC, is royalty-free. Nevertheless, since HEVC can reproduce identical content at half the bitrate as H.264, it’s expected that this will eventually become the next dominant mainstream codec.
What are your thoughts regarding the demise of Flash? Share with us some of your fondest memories of the old girl in the comments below.
Next:10 best video streaming apps for Android
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