Google will stop showing Flash content in search results

[nanoguy]

Bottom line: Flash usage has slowly decreased over the last few years, as Adobe is preparing to sunset the technology by the end of 2020. Google will now stop indexing Flash content, which isn't going to have a significant impact, as most websites have already migrated to newer web technologies.

Google is putting one of the final nails in Adobe Flash's coffin. The company announced it will stop indexing pages that use Flash, as well as standalone ".swf" animation files. That means about three percent of all websites (or eight percent of the top 1000) will become less discoverable by the end of the year, while almost everyone else has already migrated to more modern web technologies.

Flash has been on its way out since 2010, when Steve Jobs famously decided to avoid including the technology in Apple's iPhone, iPad, and Mac products. While he was highly critical of the performance and security shortcomings of Flash, developers saw it as a necessary stepping stone towards richer websites and web apps. Many of us have fond memories of the first mini-games you could play in a web browser.

Adobe also signed Flash's demise in 2017, when it promised to stop updating and distributing it by the end of 2020.

Google's latest version of Chrome blocks Flash content by default, and while users and IT administrators can still enable it manually, that option will be removed in one of next year's releases. Microsoft's Chromium-based Edge will also be affected by these changes.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/82547-google-stop-showing-flash-content-search-results.html

 

[Uncle Al]

Yeah, it always was a security problem and probably won't be missed .....

 

[Kezhen Gao]

The comic summed it all up pretty nicely.

 

[candle_86]

Bad news for legacy sites and archived data though, this will impact closed internal Enterprise intranet sites.

 

[arrowflash]

Honestly, Google has no business doing this, acting as gatekeepers and deciding what content people should be served. At the very least there should be a toggle in the settings to re-enable finding of Flash content. What if I want to search for Flash content, to find archives of old-school Flash-based games and Flash game portals (that still exist, even if their public nowadays is mostly nostalgic people)?

I'm getting really tired of companies such as Google thinking they know better than me what kind of content I should have access to. It's way past time that a better alternative came up.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Honestly, Google has no business doing this, acting as gatekeepers and deciding what content people should be served. At the very least there should be a toggle in the settings to re-enable finding of Flash content. What if I want to search for Flash content, to find archives of old-school Flash-based games and Flash game portals (that still exist, even if their public nowadays is mostly nostalgic people)?

I'm getting really tired of companies such as Google thinking they know better than me what kind of content I should have access to. It's way past time that a better alternative came up.

DuckDuckGo

 

[arrowflash]

DuckDuckGo

Afaik DuckDuckGo uses Google search algorithms, so it should be affected as well.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Afaik DuckDuckGo uses Google search algorithms, so it should be affected as well.

DDG founder and CEO says they don't.

Is it true that DuckDuckgo uses Google search servers and algorithms instead of proprietary ones?

Answer: It is not better than Google search engine. DuckDuckGo (also abbreviated as DDG) is an internet search engine that emphasizes protecting searchers' privacy and avoiding the filter bubble of personalized search results. DuckDuckGo distinguishes itself from other search engines by not prof...

www.quora.com

 

[arrowflash]

DDG founder and CEO says they don't.

Is it true that DuckDuckgo uses Google search servers and algorithms instead of proprietary ones?

Answer: It is not better than Google search engine. DuckDuckGo (also abbreviated as DDG) is an internet search engine that emphasizes protecting searchers' privacy and avoiding the filter bubble of personalized search results. DuckDuckGo distinguishes itself from other search engines by not prof...

www.quora.com

Do a few simple searches on both engines, and comparing most results will show that his claim is obvious BS.

A better option, especially for searching Flash content would be searx.org, which is a meta search engine that aggregates results from several search engines (among them Google).

 

[Lew Zealand]

I use DDG as my default but I can't find things sometimes on it so I head back to Google, where I (usually) find my answer. Which suggests that the 2 work differently. Of course that could merely be the difference of Google profiling me while DDG doesn't.

 

[magdziam]

DuckDuckGo

I use DuckDuckGo on my mobile too.