Google Chrome Will Block All NPAPI Plugins By Default In January

An anonymous reader writes Google today provided an update on its plan to remove Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) from Chrome, which the company says will improve the browser's security, speed, and stability, as well as reduce complexity in the code base. In short, the latest timeline is as follows: Block all plugins by default in January 2015, disable support in April 2015, and remove support completely in September 2015. For context, Google first announced in September 2013 that it was planning to drop NPAPI. At the time, Google said anonymous Chrome usage data showed just six NPAPI plugins were used by more than 5 percent of users, and the company was hoping to remove support from Chrome "before the end of 2014, but the exact timing will depend on usage and user feedback."

Comments

Re:Which 6?

[jandrese]

From the link:

Silverlight (launched by 15 percent of Chrome users last month).
Unity (9.1 percent).
Google Earth (9.1 percent).
Java (8.9 percent, but already blocked for security reasons).
Google Talk (8.7 percent).
Facebook Video (6.0 percent).

Silverlight is in that list thanks to Netflix, but Google got HTML5 video working for Netflix so that should drop off of there. Google Earth seems like something Google can fix as well. Same with Google Talk.

Unity, Java, and Facebook Video might be problematic however. I guess we'll have to wait and see if Chrome users are important enough for the respective companies to redevelop their plugins.