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Chrome To Freeze Flash Ads On Sight From September 1

Posted by Soulskill on from the making-the-internet-less-obnoxious dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Shaun Nichols from the Register reports that unimportant Flash content will be click-to-play by default in Google Chrome from September 1. He writes, "Google is making good on its promise to strangle Adobe Flash's ability to auto-play in Chrome. The web giant has set September 1, 2015 as the date from which non-important Flash files will be click-to-play in the browser by default – effectively freezing out 'many' Flash ads in the process. Netizens can right-click over the security-challenged plugin and select 'Run this' if they want to unfreeze an ad. Otherwise, the Flash files will remain suspended in a grey box, unable to cause any harm nor any annoyance."

5 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Do we really want Google... by SeriousTube · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's silly. It's click to play, not a total block.

  2. Re:Do we really want Google... by Kiwikwi · · Score: 4, Informative

    Like it or not, all the major browsers are phasing out plugin support. Microsoft and Chrome has already dropped support for plugins other than Flash, and Mozilla is about to do the same. Flash gets special treatment due to its market share, but make no mistake, the browser manufacturers are looking to kill it as soon as reasonably possible, too.

  3. Re:I've had this as a plug-in. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Yep. No one should be dancing for joy.

    This wasn't done out of the goodness of Google's heart. They are merely taking down the competition.

    Take off your tin-foil hat. It's click-to-play. You can still view your dancing cats or whatever if you like. I've had this turned on for pretty much everything for a while now and it is awesome

  4. Re:non-important? by laie_techie · · Score: 3, Informative

    Exactly. Autoplay of HTML5 video is a real pain, and one of the more noxious ways modern advertisers try to shove their content down our throats. Modern advertising really is the haunt of sociopaths.

    There are ways to stop autoplay for Chrome and Firefox.

  5. Re:I've had this as a plug-in. by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm assuming HTML5 graphics and videos will still play, so if it's limited to just Flash, so what?

    So what? It'll stop all drive-by Flash malware. cf. the AOL (advertising.com) attack vectors that are such a problem right now.

    Amazon is refusing Flash ads on its CDN on the same day.

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
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