16 ms·

Google moves to replace Flash with HTML5

215 points by slederer 10y ago

cmdrfred 10y ago
Why are the top ten sites exempt?
- soccerdave 10y ago
  Because conveniently several of them are Google properties. If their sites weren't top 10, but top 20, then we would see the top 20 sites exempt.
  - zellyn 10y ago
    "several" Aside from YouTube, I don't see any other Google properties in the list. https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/chromium-dev/0wWoRRhTA_E/__E3jf40OAAJ https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/chromium-dev/...
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    Why would they build html5 versions of their properties and then serve flash versions to their html5 browser?
    - kuschku 10y ago
      Because they don’t have html5 versions of all of their properties? several of them are still flash-only, for example, Google Finance.
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        That's not a response to anything I said. My point is that they are building html5 versions of many of their sites (like Youtube, probably the biggest site supporting html5). Why would they care about serving the old flash versions of those sites to their html5 browser? I agree that they have not moved all of their properties in lockstep over to html5. But I think Youtube supporting html5 provides more information about their motivations than the number of domains they are putting on the default whitelist.
    - bitmapbrother 10y ago
      I believe this has more to do with supporting old browsers that don't have support for HTML5 video.
  - deelowe 10y ago
    "Several" means one now?
  - bitmapbrother 10y ago
    YouTube is the only Google property on the list. In fact, there are more Amazon properties than Google. So the "point" you were trying to make didn't work out.
- tudorw 10y ago
  Because the internet is no longer fair :( Things are breaking, I cannot get a mail server set up to send mail to microsoft owned properties, no bounce message just a void, I'm 10/10 on mail-test .com, DMARC, SPF, PTR, no RBL, just m$ don't want me to send email to their users, a private RBL maybe, I cannot know because they don't reply to communications regarding it, nothing to do with this point, except it's asymptotic of a capitalist system with no custodians, nobody is being paid to keep it fair, so it won't stay fair, education of the public is a possible hope, but again, nobody pays for that so...
  - tudorw 10y ago
    Nothing Google does can surprise me while I can still say 'OK Google' to 'OK Google' and it think I want to search for 'OK Google', who ever searches for 'OK Google' ? Or maybe it's the Android N preview that bricked my phone that explains my mood.
  - flyinghamster 10y ago
    Could this be IPv6-related? I've run my own server for a long time, but when I spun up a new VPS and enabled IPv6, I suddenly couldn't send mail to Comcast customers. It seems that the single default IPv6 address fell into a privately-blacklisted /64. I was able to work around it by firewalling Comcast's IPv6 MX hosts, but getting my own /64 was the real fix. On the other hand, I don't know anyone with an @some-microsoft-property email address, so I don't know whether I'll be having trouble sending things there. I can reach Gmail and Yahoo (and after getting my own /64, Comcast) without trouble, though. EDIT: Hmmm, mail-test.com seems to be a parked domain.
    - cornedor 10y ago
      A college of my has struggled days with this issue, gmail wouldn't accept any mail send from a IPv6, ended up disabling IPv6 at the end. It seems like google only uses IPv6 for internal mail's, sending a mail to another account sends them using IPv4. Even Facebook, Microsoft etc still use IPv4 for their email's.
      - 10y ago
- mrweasel 10y ago
  If non of those top ten sites are porn site I'll be disappointed.
  - zackp30 10y ago
    Haven't looked on the top ten sites list yet, but xvideos uses HTML5 on desktop and mobile now.
- blablablame 10y ago
  Because something something, DO NO EVIL, something something. Seriously, Google is as bad as every other tech company, but for some reason, when they do shit like this, people tend to over look it (not sure if because a lot of folks directly or indirectly have their livelihoods connected to Google properties or what not)
  - andybak 10y ago
    I'm rather baffled as to the sinister narrative you're attempting to construct here. (I sometimes worry I come across as a Google apologist. I suppose I am in a devil's advocate sense. It's not that I think Google is a shining beacon of decency. It's just that the quality of anti-Google thinking on HN is so low I find it difficult to let it pass. If you could all step up your game somewhat then I can stop chiming in).
    - soylentcola 10y ago
      I notice the same thing. As far as the Flash thing, I'd imagine it's a matter of trying to balance the desire to wean people off of using insecure plugins while minimizing complaints. Certainly not "fair" to give some a pass and not others but at the same time, if (made up number) 95% of non-sketchy Flash usage takes place on ten sites, you can weed out a huge swath of exploit problems while minimizing hassle as you wait for the top 10 to move away from Flash as well. It's an imperfect solution to be sure. But in these situations (officially ending support for WinXP/IE6, ending support for some plugin, etc) there is no perfect one. There needs to be some motivation to get users and websites to move on from Flash but there's also consideration for breaking commonly used services.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
  According to Google themselves, to avoid "over-prompting" users. If the most popular sites bring up the click-to-play prompt, users will get frustrated quickly or habitually click.
- ebbv 10y ago
  Because Google of 2010s is the same as Microsoft of the 1990s. The only difference being most of the tech world in the 90s realized how badly Microsoft was abusing their position and almost nobody complains about Google. Just to be clear; I'm in favor of ditching the include Flash by default in Chrome, but I'm not in favor of them making exceptions for certain sites. That's just horse shit.
  - euyyn 10y ago
    > almost nobody complains about Google That's because most of the tech world in the 2010s understands the difference.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  Because they're the ones most likely to get Google into legal and regulatory trouble if they don't work.
- mtgx 10y ago
  It does seem like a rather arbitrary decision, but they only get 1 year extension (hopefully there won't be some "last-minute compromises", to allow say the top 3 sites use flash for yet another year).
- macspoofing 10y ago
  Because Google doesn't want to dog-food their own policy because it may impact their business. If it impacts others, who cares.
lossolo 10y ago
Finally, amount of exploits in flash is ridiculous and the fact that every couple of months there are new critical ones.
puppetmaster3 10y ago
blocks?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
BugsBunnySan 10y ago
well, good riddance to flash, but Encrypted Media Extensions are definitly not an advantage, see for example https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/save-firefox https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/save-firefox
- dingaling 10y ago
  > but Encrypted Media Extensions are definitly not an advantage Yes, it is dishonest of Google to keep referring to 'the Open Web' when 'HTML5 video' is heading towards being simply an enabler for other proprietary plug-ins. The Open Web of binary blobs.
  - jcranmer 10y ago
    I'm still waiting for Google Hangouts to actually use WebRTC and not require a plugin (or NaCl). Like they promised several years ago. Google has been really dishonest about their moves to the Open Web.
  - fixermark 10y ago
    "Open Web" includes online commerce. It's still open even though people use HTTPS-encrypted data streams, for example.
    - supergreg 10y ago
      Browser makers don't need to get a certification to use HTTPS.
      - fixermark 10y ago
        No, but they do need to get a signed chain-of-trust certificate rooted to a certificate authority recognized by their clients' user agents. They also need a well-defined domain name that was registered through some domain-name registrar, somewhere. The notion that some parts of the web standard are pay-to-play is actually not new.
- 10y ago
franciscop 10y ago
> DRM is a hugely important part of the online video workflow and HTML5 offers a very useful tool with Encrypted Media Extensions. DRM has never been important for online video workflow and it's only useful in the way a walled garden is useful... it will require that each pair of browser-website (with EME) negotiate before allowing it, basically making it impossible for smaller browsers to become useful at all
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- air 10y ago
  Netflix begs to differ.
  - pstuart 10y ago
    workflow or delivery?
  - izacus 10y ago
    With what? EME is a "cure" for a problem you shouldn't have in the first place. Idiotic technology to do nothing useful and solve no problems to make some content company executives feel better about their liability. EME does abosolutely nothing to prevent piracy and only serves as another roadblock for people to jump before seeing videos.
    - dietrichepp 10y ago
      Just because you shouldn't have a problem doesn't mean you don't actually have that problem.
    - bduerst 10y ago
      Bad actors exist, hence the technology does something useful. Piracy [probably] isn't a problem for you, but if you think it isn't a problem at all, then you should read this: http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/ http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-...
matwood 10y ago
Meanwhile, Chrome shows it blocked flash from loading for the bitmovin site.
- slederer 10y ago
  ?
  - ratstew 10y ago
    I guess folks with click-to-play enabled are seeing something like this: http://i.imgur.com/WLaqlXo.png http://i.imgur.com/WLaqlXo.png This was on Firefox by the way.
PretzelFisch 10y ago
I don't care so much about video, but audio. I can't find a site that streams audio with out flash. This is how this change will affect me.
- ramy_d 10y ago
  I believe bandcamp has been flash free for quite some time
- cornedor 10y ago
  Including Google's own Google Music, I use Firefox in my daily browsing without Flash installed, when I want to listen to my music i've to start Google Chrome which has Flash by default. The experimental HTML5-audio toggle is always disabled for me.
  - Ambroos 10y ago
    Play Music always uses HTML5 now, which is why the toggle is not available (but it's indicated badly). You can disable the built-in Flash on chrome://plugins and everything will still work.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - azdle 10y ago
      For me at least, it still needs Flash in Firefox, this is what I see: http://i.imgur.com/VH8aOrl.jpg http://i.imgur.com/VH8aOrl.jpg
    - wjoe 10y ago
      Only in Chrome, it still requires Flash in Firefox for some reason. They're using some non-standard way of doing HTML5 Audio as far as I remember, which only works in Chrome. Bug report is here - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=911837 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=911837 - It's been a while since I looked into it and looks like the details have changed recently. At least a quick attempt now tells me "Please refresh this page in your browser to get back to listening to your music. If issues persist, make sure you have Flash enabled and working."
innix 10y ago
This is a real blow to sites that rely on Flash's RTMP for low-latency live streaming. There's no real HTML5 equivalent right now. HLS and MPEG-DASH have a delay of around 30 seconds, often more.
- slederer 10y ago
  We did tests here and got down to 8 seconds end to end delay, including transcoding. but also HTTP2.0 push will be super interesting here.
  - ericzawo 10y ago
    Wow, impressive! I'm waiting for the day where my internet stream is 'Live' like my television is 'live.'
    - daenney 10y ago
      Though not imposed by the technology most of your live TV isn't actually live. There's a thing known as the broadcast delay or the seven seconds delay that a lot of broadcasters use to beep out profanities or do live subtitles and other alterations.
    - ramy_d 10y ago
      I did a cursory search out of curiosity: TV has a 7 second delay they add themselves to filter content. The broadcast itself is pretty much instant. It's impressive.
      - mikeryan 10y ago
        Depends on Delivery mechanism as well. Interestingly if you put a TV using cable next to a TV using satellite the satellite TV will trail cable by 2-3 seconds sometimes just from the amount of time to bounce the signal off of satellites.
        jonknee 10y ago
aardshark 10y ago
Funny, HTML5 streaming in Chrome often breaks for me and I have to restart to fix this. Unfortunately, I can't reproduce this reliably, otherwise I'd file a bug.
romanlevin 10y ago
You can still use Flash if you click-to-play, or you can white-list an address.
- nacs 10y ago
  Right now yes, this is an upcoming change.
  - csours 10y ago
    > Details: Later this year we plan to change how Chromium hints to websites about the presence of Flash Player, by changing the default response of Navigator.plugins and Navigator.mimeTypes. If a site offers an HTML5 experience, this change will make that the primary experience. We will continue to ship Flash Player with Chrome, and if a site truly requires Flash, a prompt will appear at the top of the page when the user first visits that site, giving them the option of allowing it to run for that site (see the proposal[2] for the mock-ups). [1] 1. https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!searchin/chromium-dev/HTML5$20by$20default/chromium-dev/0wWoRRhTA_E/__E3jf40OAAJ https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!searchin/ch... 2. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/106_KLNJfwb9L-1hVVa4i29aw1YXUy9qFX-Ye4kvJj-4/edit#slide=id.p https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/106_KLNJfwb9L-1hVVa4i...
zxcvcxz 10y ago
But I recently realized flash is now required for google music? http://i.imgur.com/9Cxirzy.png http://i.imgur.com/9Cxirzy.png It worked fine before they re-wrote it. Now I have to turn on the flash plugin and the whole thing runs slow and feels clunky. Why google?
simonsarris 10y ago
Google Finance still uses Flash: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AGOOG https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AGOOG I really wish they didn't leave it to rot.
- sergers 10y ago
  Yea the graphs are terrible there without flash Site even says when viewing without flash:"For the ubercool interactive charts, you need to install the Adobe Flash Player"
  - puddintane 10y ago
    which is a bit surprising considering how quick a company the size of Google could whip up a more modern approach to this!
    - nacs 10y ago
      > a company the size of Google could whip up a more modern approach to this! Maybe Google should look into .. Google Charts? https://developers.google.com/chart/ https://developers.google.com/chart/
      - eonw 10y ago
        which i use in a lot of projects that need simple charting. i really don't know why google doesn't dogfood this product more, its a great, simple, easy to use charting system.
- clydethefrog 10y ago
  So does Google Music, you need Chrome if you want to use it without Flash and even then it doesn't work immediately. http://googlesystem.blogspot.nl/2016/04/google-play-music-still-requires-flash.html?m=1 http://googlesystem.blogspot.nl/2016/04/google-play-music-st...
  - 10y ago
gtirloni 10y ago
I hope this is the final push Spotify needs to drop Flash from their web player. I'm pretty satisfied with the service except for this.
oolongCat 10y ago
<rant> Getting really frustrated with all the things chrome is starting to change. We are starting to become a bunch of sheep, if google wants something, they announce it, and implement it, we developers, users have to fall in line and start doing everything they want. What the hell is going on, why are we not pissed off about this. Look I hate Flash as much as the other guy, but blocking an extention just because a company doesn't like it. How long before we see adblockers, anti piracy trackers and basically anything that a company like google will see as a threat get blocked. Don't give me that "Oh flash has security holes so we are blocking it." Yeh when our governments use this same excuse we are all up in arms, but when a company does this many are okay with it. The sad sad truth is majority of users are going to fall in line whenever a company decides what's best for them. </rant> And to all the fan-boys/girls down-voting me. Have the decency to leave a comment as to why you are downvoting.
- snsr 10y ago
  But Flash is garbage, and has been for a long time.
  - oolongCat 10y ago
    Flash is garbage, yes! I agree, I am talking about these blocking changes as a whole. Flash while it is indeed a piece of garbage, has done a lot for the internet, there are many places of the internet that are flash dependent. Some companies are still using flash in their internal systems, how do you justify breaking something that works for so many people?
    - SXX 10y ago
      > Some companies are still using flash in their internal systems, how do you justify breaking something that works for so many people? Now think of IE6 deprecation.
    - sp332 10y ago
      They're not breaking it. It's click-to-play, same as in Firefox by default.
macspoofing 10y ago
What bugs me is that Google gave itself a pass by white-listing YouTube - because it turns out some people still need Flash on YouTube. Google should dog-food their own policies.
- IIlllIllIIIIlII 10y ago
  Likewise, Google penalizes webpages by size. A 3 megabyte page gets a larger penalty than a 1 megabyte, which has a larger penalty than a 1 kB page. But, they give themselves a free pass, as their own "webpage guidelines" page is 3.4 megabytes long! But, even worse, it has a video on a carousel that repeatedly downloads the video whenever it restarts the video loop.
  - josefresco 10y ago
    How do you know they give their own web page a pass? It could be scored low and Google just doesn't care, or like all of us, has other priorities. The fact that Google recommends lightweight pages, and still builds heavy pages is contradicting, but doesn't mean they've built in some sort of "whitelist" for their own sites.
    - IIlllIllIIIIlII 10y ago
      How about, "Google doesn't do what it makes others do" which is true whether they give a boost to themselves or not.
      - Dylan16807 10y ago
        Google doesn't make websites be lightweight. Heavy websites get indexed just like any other. If they want to make a heavy page and accept the penalty, there's nothing wrong with that.
- hsivonen 10y ago
  Are there parts of YouTube that require Flash in Chrome other than legacy embeds on non-YouTube sites that enable the embedding page to script the Flash embed via a JS API?
yaur 10y ago
While the focus is rightly on video, there are a huge number of games written in flash. In the short term this s probably a hug boost for unity... But as flash dies there will be a lot of games that die with it.
- fixermark 10y ago
  Unity is itself a proprietary, single-vendor, closed-source plugin. Though I don't disagree at all, transitioning from one proprietary, single-vendor, closed-source plugin to another isn't actually going to solve the problems that killing Flash is supposed to solve (apart from the one where Flash is also a gigantic legacy-code monument to all our sins, of course ;) ).
  - mastax 10y ago
    Unity you output WebGl-based games, see http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/webgl-building.html http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/webgl-building.html From what I remember it's not as performant or reliable as the plugin, so there's some work to be done on unity's end. Beyond that, if browser makers want to replace native code plugins they have to give a better alternative. WebAssembly might help, but since it's essentially running in the same vm as JS I'm not sure it'll be faster other than the parsing overhead.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - fixermark 10y ago
      > From what I remember it's not as performant or reliable as the plugin... ... two things that absolutely kill videogames, so it's more accurate to say "Unity you will output WebGl-based games" (at some indeterminate point in the future). Agreed that it's a step in the right direction over alternatives though.
  - yaur 10y ago
    Chrome already killed the unity plugin which is what really lit a fire under there ass to get WebGL working well. Its reasonable now, at least for some types of games.
DarkLinkXXXX 10y ago
"By the end of this year Chrome will begin ignoring Flash as Google takes another step towards removing the “final Plugin” by replacing Flash with HTML5." The final plugin? What about widevine?
rektide 10y ago
Among other things, it means the final nail in the coffin of hardware accelerated web video on Linux, after Chrome disabled then removed it's working browser implementation. https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137247 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137247
consto 10y ago
I don't care about what it means for video or audio. Unlike games they both are easily adapted and will be adapted on the vast majority of sites.
shmerl 10y ago
I've heard that many CDNs are still lagging to adopt DASH, and it causes a major problem for any service which wants to implement HTML5 video (DASH + Media Source Extensions). How does it work for Youtube, do they simply run their own CDN? > DRM is a hugely important part of the online video workflow I agree to other commenters here who pointed the nonsense of this. DRM is not an important part of the workflow. It's a tool of corrupted groups for standards poisoning, market control and "creative" undemocratic lawmaking.
- nacs 10y ago
  > Youtube, do they simply run their own CDN Yes, the Google CDN (Google owns Youtube).
  - shmerl 10y ago
    So why don't other CDNs support DASH?
    - eonw 10y ago
      until it is widely used and supported, there is a big cost to adding features to a CDN. the means dont justify the ends.
      - shmerl 10y ago
        And how is it supposed to be used if CDNs don't support it? Sounds like a circular dependency to me. Technology is here, but without infrastructure it's close to impossible to use at scale.
        supergreg 10y ago
        You cut flash out and then the need to support it pops up.
        shmerl 10y ago
jgh 10y ago
ok, are Google planning on supporting HLS if they're ditching flash? I see this site is saying that it does (with their player) -- so does it natively or are these guys doing a transmux in Javascript similar to HLS.js and others?
- cpeterso 10y ago
  Chrome supports HLS natively on Android, but not desktop. Safari and Edge support HLS natively on desktop. Firefox doesn't support HLS natively on Android or desktop.
ajharrison 10y ago
Steve Jobs was right ... 6 years ago.
- supergreg 10y ago
  And Stallman was right 12 years ago.
746F7475 10y ago
Absolutely nothing, if your video site is still using flash you are already way behind the times.
taneq 10y ago
"What does this mean for video"? It means I won't ever have goddamn McAfee Antivirus try to install itself on my computer when I update Flash.
- eonw 10y ago
  this! and i wont have to update flash every few days because of its terrible security.
samsonradu 10y ago
I hate it when I see people talking about Flash as if it's the Web's cancer. Remember Flash pushed the web heavily forward back when we had to install all sorts of desktop applications and codecs just to watch a video or play a simple game. It is an optional plugin that you can always disable. Not having it at all would lead to a poorer UX in my opinion. Can't Chrome just have a toggle Flash on/off in the toolbar and get over it? And let Flash die naturally, when HTML5 catches up? Edit Also the propaganda [1] against it makes me laugh. The reason Google wants it out is probably because it can't track the ads inside Flash apps. [1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3160644/Google-Mozilla-pull-plug-Adobe-Flash-Tech-giants-disable-program-browsers-following-critical-security-flaw.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3160644/Googl... "Leaked documents have revealed the program has a serious vulnerability that lets hackers take over anyone's computer."
- samsonradu 10y ago
  Hell I could rant about this for long. And some people who say Flash is insecure (it probably is) are also the ones who install ad-blockers, antiviruses and all sorts of creepy browser extensions. Well that s not safe either, but Steve Jobs said Flash is bad so it must be. However Steve Jobs knew he cannot monetize the web as well as the AppStore so the "open" web was pulled backwards.
jokoon 10y ago
I started to watch a lot of youtube videos recently, but it doesnt seem all of them require EME. Am I wrong? Because it seems I can download them fine with a firefox addon, except a very few of them for obvious copyright reasons. I also rarely see song videos that cannot be downloaded from mp3 conversion websites. No idea if those websites are legal or not. Anyway, on one side you have youtube advertising and adblockers, on the other side they want to force people to stay online and not use the content offline, but they can't have all of them not block ads. I really wonder about the real cost of hosting youtube videos, and the money they make from ads on youtube. I think there is a huge loss there. Youtube RED might solve this.
esturk 10y ago
Steam is still using Flash for their stats page. http://store.steampowered.com/stats/ http://store.steampowered.com/stats/ As others have mentioned, Google finance is as well as well as other finance sites. Makes you wonder how someone haven't introduced any HTML5 graphs for stats yet...
juleska 10y ago
They could fix the Chrome problems on Mac before to do this. I just can't see any youtube video on Chrome, it simple doesn't work :), thx
ludamad 10y ago
Sad that shumway isn't mature enough yet to replace Flash completely, else this could have been a seamless change
exodust 10y ago
This article has the vibe of drawing attention to something else other than the subject of the piece. Is that unfair to say? Not for me to judge I suppose, but the final paragraph says it all. Anyway, a couple of things from the article... > "Netflix have already switched to HTML5...due to the benefits of HTML5 based streaming" > "...HTML5 outperforms plugin based playback in almost every department" > "...delivering high bandwidth products such as 360° video and Virtual Reality in a more efficient manor." Such generic statements! Netflix HTML5 playback in both Chrome and Firefox is limited to 720p. That's not a benefit and is why I must use silverlight in IE on Windows 7 to watch 1080p Netflix. They really should cover things like this to better reflect how things actually are. The claims about HTML5 performance over plugins should only come from people who have done side by side comparisons. So many bloggers telling it according to something they read somewhere. Finally, "360° video in a more efficient manor". I like efficient manors, even bad manors, but again this claim should be backed up with evidence. If you look at VR, if you look at 360 video, the evidence for better performance in HTML5 for these technologies is simply not there. Even with still image panoramas, anyone who has made these in something like KrPano will know that Flash panoramas generally outperform HTML5 panoramas. Smoother motion, better memory management, better cross-browser performance. We may wish it weren't so, but we should get facts straight regardless of whether it leaves HTML (which we love) a little bruised in the comparison.

215 points by slederer 10y ago

cmdrfred 10y ago

Why are the top ten sites exempt?

soccerdave 10y ago
Because conveniently several of them are Google properties. If their sites weren't top 10, but top 20, then we would see the top 20 sites exempt.
- zellyn 10y ago
  "several" Aside from YouTube, I don't see any other Google properties in the list. https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/chromium-dev/0wWoRRhTA_E/__E3jf40OAAJ https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/chromium-dev/...
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Why would they build html5 versions of their properties and then serve flash versions to their html5 browser?
  - kuschku 10y ago
    Because they don’t have html5 versions of all of their properties? several of them are still flash-only, for example, Google Finance.
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      That's not a response to anything I said. My point is that they are building html5 versions of many of their sites (like Youtube, probably the biggest site supporting html5). Why would they care about serving the old flash versions of those sites to their html5 browser? I agree that they have not moved all of their properties in lockstep over to html5. But I think Youtube supporting html5 provides more information about their motivations than the number of domains they are putting on the default whitelist.
  - bitmapbrother 10y ago
    I believe this has more to do with supporting old browsers that don't have support for HTML5 video.
- deelowe 10y ago
  "Several" means one now?
- bitmapbrother 10y ago
  YouTube is the only Google property on the list. In fact, there are more Amazon properties than Google. So the "point" you were trying to make didn't work out.
tudorw 10y ago
Because the internet is no longer fair :( Things are breaking, I cannot get a mail server set up to send mail to microsoft owned properties, no bounce message just a void, I'm 10/10 on mail-test .com, DMARC, SPF, PTR, no RBL, just m$ don't want me to send email to their users, a private RBL maybe, I cannot know because they don't reply to communications regarding it, nothing to do with this point, except it's asymptotic of a capitalist system with no custodians, nobody is being paid to keep it fair, so it won't stay fair, education of the public is a possible hope, but again, nobody pays for that so...
- tudorw 10y ago
  Nothing Google does can surprise me while I can still say 'OK Google' to 'OK Google' and it think I want to search for 'OK Google', who ever searches for 'OK Google' ? Or maybe it's the Android N preview that bricked my phone that explains my mood.
- flyinghamster 10y ago
  Could this be IPv6-related? I've run my own server for a long time, but when I spun up a new VPS and enabled IPv6, I suddenly couldn't send mail to Comcast customers. It seems that the single default IPv6 address fell into a privately-blacklisted /64. I was able to work around it by firewalling Comcast's IPv6 MX hosts, but getting my own /64 was the real fix. On the other hand, I don't know anyone with an @some-microsoft-property email address, so I don't know whether I'll be having trouble sending things there. I can reach Gmail and Yahoo (and after getting my own /64, Comcast) without trouble, though. EDIT: Hmmm, mail-test.com seems to be a parked domain.
  - cornedor 10y ago
    A college of my has struggled days with this issue, gmail wouldn't accept any mail send from a IPv6, ended up disabling IPv6 at the end. It seems like google only uses IPv6 for internal mail's, sending a mail to another account sends them using IPv4. Even Facebook, Microsoft etc still use IPv4 for their email's.
    - 10y ago
mrweasel 10y ago
If non of those top ten sites are porn site I'll be disappointed.
- zackp30 10y ago
  Haven't looked on the top ten sites list yet, but xvideos uses HTML5 on desktop and mobile now.
blablablame 10y ago
Because something something, DO NO EVIL, something something. Seriously, Google is as bad as every other tech company, but for some reason, when they do shit like this, people tend to over look it (not sure if because a lot of folks directly or indirectly have their livelihoods connected to Google properties or what not)
- andybak 10y ago
  I'm rather baffled as to the sinister narrative you're attempting to construct here. (I sometimes worry I come across as a Google apologist. I suppose I am in a devil's advocate sense. It's not that I think Google is a shining beacon of decency. It's just that the quality of anti-Google thinking on HN is so low I find it difficult to let it pass. If you could all step up your game somewhat then I can stop chiming in).
  - soylentcola 10y ago
    I notice the same thing. As far as the Flash thing, I'd imagine it's a matter of trying to balance the desire to wean people off of using insecure plugins while minimizing complaints. Certainly not "fair" to give some a pass and not others but at the same time, if (made up number) 95% of non-sketchy Flash usage takes place on ten sites, you can weed out a huge swath of exploit problems while minimizing hassle as you wait for the top 10 to move away from Flash as well. It's an imperfect solution to be sure. But in these situations (officially ending support for WinXP/IE6, ending support for some plugin, etc) there is no perfect one. There needs to be some motivation to get users and websites to move on from Flash but there's also consideration for breaking commonly used services.
TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
According to Google themselves, to avoid "over-prompting" users. If the most popular sites bring up the click-to-play prompt, users will get frustrated quickly or habitually click.
ebbv 10y ago
Because Google of 2010s is the same as Microsoft of the 1990s. The only difference being most of the tech world in the 90s realized how badly Microsoft was abusing their position and almost nobody complains about Google. Just to be clear; I'm in favor of ditching the include Flash by default in Chrome, but I'm not in favor of them making exceptions for certain sites. That's just horse shit.
- euyyn 10y ago
  > almost nobody complains about Google That's because most of the tech world in the 2010s understands the difference.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
Because they're the ones most likely to get Google into legal and regulatory trouble if they don't work.
mtgx 10y ago
It does seem like a rather arbitrary decision, but they only get 1 year extension (hopefully there won't be some "last-minute compromises", to allow say the top 3 sites use flash for yet another year).
macspoofing 10y ago
Because Google doesn't want to dog-food their own policy because it may impact their business. If it impacts others, who cares.

lossolo 10y ago

Finally, amount of exploits in flash is ridiculous and the fact that every couple of months there are new critical ones.

puppetmaster3 10y ago

blocks?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

BugsBunnySan 10y ago

well, good riddance to flash, but Encrypted Media Extensions are definitly not an advantage, see for example https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/save-firefox https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/save-firefox

dingaling 10y ago
> but Encrypted Media Extensions are definitly not an advantage Yes, it is dishonest of Google to keep referring to 'the Open Web' when 'HTML5 video' is heading towards being simply an enabler for other proprietary plug-ins. The Open Web of binary blobs.
- jcranmer 10y ago
  I'm still waiting for Google Hangouts to actually use WebRTC and not require a plugin (or NaCl). Like they promised several years ago. Google has been really dishonest about their moves to the Open Web.
- fixermark 10y ago
  "Open Web" includes online commerce. It's still open even though people use HTTPS-encrypted data streams, for example.
  - supergreg 10y ago
    Browser makers don't need to get a certification to use HTTPS.
    - fixermark 10y ago
      No, but they do need to get a signed chain-of-trust certificate rooted to a certificate authority recognized by their clients' user agents. They also need a well-defined domain name that was registered through some domain-name registrar, somewhere. The notion that some parts of the web standard are pay-to-play is actually not new.
10y ago

franciscop 10y ago

> DRM is a hugely important part of the online video workflow and HTML5 offers a very useful tool with Encrypted Media Extensions. DRM has never been important for online video workflow and it's only useful in the way a walled garden is useful... it will require that each pair of browser-website (with EME) negotiate before allowing it, basically making it impossible for smaller browsers to become useful at all

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
air 10y ago
Netflix begs to differ.
- pstuart 10y ago
  workflow or delivery?
- izacus 10y ago
  With what? EME is a "cure" for a problem you shouldn't have in the first place. Idiotic technology to do nothing useful and solve no problems to make some content company executives feel better about their liability. EME does abosolutely nothing to prevent piracy and only serves as another roadblock for people to jump before seeing videos.
  - dietrichepp 10y ago
    Just because you shouldn't have a problem doesn't mean you don't actually have that problem.
  - bduerst 10y ago
    Bad actors exist, hence the technology does something useful. Piracy [probably] isn't a problem for you, but if you think it isn't a problem at all, then you should read this: http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/ http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-...

matwood 10y ago

Meanwhile, Chrome shows it blocked flash from loading for the bitmovin site.

slederer 10y ago
?
- ratstew 10y ago
  I guess folks with click-to-play enabled are seeing something like this: http://i.imgur.com/WLaqlXo.png http://i.imgur.com/WLaqlXo.png This was on Firefox by the way.

PretzelFisch 10y ago

I don't care so much about video, but audio. I can't find a site that streams audio with out flash. This is how this change will affect me.

ramy_d 10y ago
I believe bandcamp has been flash free for quite some time
cornedor 10y ago
Including Google's own Google Music, I use Firefox in my daily browsing without Flash installed, when I want to listen to my music i've to start Google Chrome which has Flash by default. The experimental HTML5-audio toggle is always disabled for me.
- Ambroos 10y ago
  Play Music always uses HTML5 now, which is why the toggle is not available (but it's indicated badly). You can disable the built-in Flash on chrome://plugins and everything will still work.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - azdle 10y ago
    For me at least, it still needs Flash in Firefox, this is what I see: http://i.imgur.com/VH8aOrl.jpg http://i.imgur.com/VH8aOrl.jpg
  - wjoe 10y ago
    Only in Chrome, it still requires Flash in Firefox for some reason. They're using some non-standard way of doing HTML5 Audio as far as I remember, which only works in Chrome. Bug report is here - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=911837 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=911837 - It's been a while since I looked into it and looks like the details have changed recently. At least a quick attempt now tells me "Please refresh this page in your browser to get back to listening to your music. If issues persist, make sure you have Flash enabled and working."

innix 10y ago

This is a real blow to sites that rely on Flash's RTMP for low-latency live streaming. There's no real HTML5 equivalent right now. HLS and MPEG-DASH have a delay of around 30 seconds, often more.

slederer 10y ago
We did tests here and got down to 8 seconds end to end delay, including transcoding. but also HTTP2.0 push will be super interesting here.
- ericzawo 10y ago
  Wow, impressive! I'm waiting for the day where my internet stream is 'Live' like my television is 'live.'
  - daenney 10y ago
    Though not imposed by the technology most of your live TV isn't actually live. There's a thing known as the broadcast delay or the seven seconds delay that a lot of broadcasters use to beep out profanities or do live subtitles and other alterations.
  - ramy_d 10y ago
    I did a cursory search out of curiosity: TV has a 7 second delay they add themselves to filter content. The broadcast itself is pretty much instant. It's impressive.
    - mikeryan 10y ago
      Depends on Delivery mechanism as well. Interestingly if you put a TV using cable next to a TV using satellite the satellite TV will trail cable by 2-3 seconds sometimes just from the amount of time to bounce the signal off of satellites.
      - jonknee 10y ago

aardshark 10y ago

Funny, HTML5 streaming in Chrome often breaks for me and I have to restart to fix this. Unfortunately, I can't reproduce this reliably, otherwise I'd file a bug.

romanlevin 10y ago

You can still use Flash if you click-to-play, or you can white-list an address.

nacs 10y ago
Right now yes, this is an upcoming change.
- csours 10y ago
  > Details: Later this year we plan to change how Chromium hints to websites about the presence of Flash Player, by changing the default response of Navigator.plugins and Navigator.mimeTypes. If a site offers an HTML5 experience, this change will make that the primary experience. We will continue to ship Flash Player with Chrome, and if a site truly requires Flash, a prompt will appear at the top of the page when the user first visits that site, giving them the option of allowing it to run for that site (see the proposal[2] for the mock-ups). [1] 1. https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!searchin/chromium-dev/HTML5$20by$20default/chromium-dev/0wWoRRhTA_E/__E3jf40OAAJ https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!searchin/ch... 2. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/106_KLNJfwb9L-1hVVa4i29aw1YXUy9qFX-Ye4kvJj-4/edit#slide=id.p https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/106_KLNJfwb9L-1hVVa4i...

zxcvcxz 10y ago

But I recently realized flash is now required for google music? http://i.imgur.com/9Cxirzy.png http://i.imgur.com/9Cxirzy.png It worked fine before they re-wrote it. Now I have to turn on the flash plugin and the whole thing runs slow and feels clunky. Why google?

simonsarris 10y ago

Google Finance still uses Flash: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AGOOG https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AGOOG I really wish they didn't leave it to rot.

sergers 10y ago
Yea the graphs are terrible there without flash Site even says when viewing without flash:"For the ubercool interactive charts, you need to install the Adobe Flash Player"
- puddintane 10y ago
  which is a bit surprising considering how quick a company the size of Google could whip up a more modern approach to this!
  - nacs 10y ago
    > a company the size of Google could whip up a more modern approach to this! Maybe Google should look into .. Google Charts? https://developers.google.com/chart/ https://developers.google.com/chart/
    - eonw 10y ago
      which i use in a lot of projects that need simple charting. i really don't know why google doesn't dogfood this product more, its a great, simple, easy to use charting system.
clydethefrog 10y ago
So does Google Music, you need Chrome if you want to use it without Flash and even then it doesn't work immediately. http://googlesystem.blogspot.nl/2016/04/google-play-music-still-requires-flash.html?m=1 http://googlesystem.blogspot.nl/2016/04/google-play-music-st...
- 10y ago

gtirloni 10y ago

I hope this is the final push Spotify needs to drop Flash from their web player. I'm pretty satisfied with the service except for this.

oolongCat 10y ago

<rant> Getting really frustrated with all the things chrome is starting to change. We are starting to become a bunch of sheep, if google wants something, they announce it, and implement it, we developers, users have to fall in line and start doing everything they want. What the hell is going on, why are we not pissed off about this. Look I hate Flash as much as the other guy, but blocking an extention just because a company doesn't like it. How long before we see adblockers, anti piracy trackers and basically anything that a company like google will see as a threat get blocked. Don't give me that "Oh flash has security holes so we are blocking it." Yeh when our governments use this same excuse we are all up in arms, but when a company does this many are okay with it. The sad sad truth is majority of users are going to fall in line whenever a company decides what's best for them. </rant> And to all the fan-boys/girls down-voting me. Have the decency to leave a comment as to why you are downvoting.

snsr 10y ago
But Flash is garbage, and has been for a long time.
- oolongCat 10y ago
  Flash is garbage, yes! I agree, I am talking about these blocking changes as a whole. Flash while it is indeed a piece of garbage, has done a lot for the internet, there are many places of the internet that are flash dependent. Some companies are still using flash in their internal systems, how do you justify breaking something that works for so many people?
  - SXX 10y ago
    > Some companies are still using flash in their internal systems, how do you justify breaking something that works for so many people? Now think of IE6 deprecation.
  - sp332 10y ago
    They're not breaking it. It's click-to-play, same as in Firefox by default.

macspoofing 10y ago

What bugs me is that Google gave itself a pass by white-listing YouTube - because it turns out some people still need Flash on YouTube. Google should dog-food their own policies.

IIlllIllIIIIlII 10y ago
Likewise, Google penalizes webpages by size. A 3 megabyte page gets a larger penalty than a 1 megabyte, which has a larger penalty than a 1 kB page. But, they give themselves a free pass, as their own "webpage guidelines" page is 3.4 megabytes long! But, even worse, it has a video on a carousel that repeatedly downloads the video whenever it restarts the video loop.
- josefresco 10y ago
  How do you know they give their own web page a pass? It could be scored low and Google just doesn't care, or like all of us, has other priorities. The fact that Google recommends lightweight pages, and still builds heavy pages is contradicting, but doesn't mean they've built in some sort of "whitelist" for their own sites.
  - IIlllIllIIIIlII 10y ago
    How about, "Google doesn't do what it makes others do" which is true whether they give a boost to themselves or not.
    - Dylan16807 10y ago
      Google doesn't make websites be lightweight. Heavy websites get indexed just like any other. If they want to make a heavy page and accept the penalty, there's nothing wrong with that.
hsivonen 10y ago
Are there parts of YouTube that require Flash in Chrome other than legacy embeds on non-YouTube sites that enable the embedding page to script the Flash embed via a JS API?

yaur 10y ago

While the focus is rightly on video, there are a huge number of games written in flash. In the short term this s probably a hug boost for unity... But as flash dies there will be a lot of games that die with it.

fixermark 10y ago
Unity is itself a proprietary, single-vendor, closed-source plugin. Though I don't disagree at all, transitioning from one proprietary, single-vendor, closed-source plugin to another isn't actually going to solve the problems that killing Flash is supposed to solve (apart from the one where Flash is also a gigantic legacy-code monument to all our sins, of course ;) ).
- mastax 10y ago
  Unity you output WebGl-based games, see http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/webgl-building.html http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/webgl-building.html From what I remember it's not as performant or reliable as the plugin, so there's some work to be done on unity's end. Beyond that, if browser makers want to replace native code plugins they have to give a better alternative. WebAssembly might help, but since it's essentially running in the same vm as JS I'm not sure it'll be faster other than the parsing overhead.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - fixermark 10y ago
    > From what I remember it's not as performant or reliable as the plugin... ... two things that absolutely kill videogames, so it's more accurate to say "Unity you will output WebGl-based games" (at some indeterminate point in the future). Agreed that it's a step in the right direction over alternatives though.
- yaur 10y ago
  Chrome already killed the unity plugin which is what really lit a fire under there ass to get WebGL working well. Its reasonable now, at least for some types of games.

DarkLinkXXXX 10y ago

"By the end of this year Chrome will begin ignoring Flash as Google takes another step towards removing the “final Plugin” by replacing Flash with HTML5." The final plugin? What about widevine?

rektide 10y ago

Among other things, it means the final nail in the coffin of hardware accelerated web video on Linux, after Chrome disabled then removed it's working browser implementation. https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137247 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137247

consto 10y ago

I don't care about what it means for video or audio. Unlike games they both are easily adapted and will be adapted on the vast majority of sites.

shmerl 10y ago

I've heard that many CDNs are still lagging to adopt DASH, and it causes a major problem for any service which wants to implement HTML5 video (DASH + Media Source Extensions). How does it work for Youtube, do they simply run their own CDN? > DRM is a hugely important part of the online video workflow I agree to other commenters here who pointed the nonsense of this. DRM is not an important part of the workflow. It's a tool of corrupted groups for standards poisoning, market control and "creative" undemocratic lawmaking.

nacs 10y ago
> Youtube, do they simply run their own CDN Yes, the Google CDN (Google owns Youtube).
- shmerl 10y ago
  So why don't other CDNs support DASH?
  - eonw 10y ago
    until it is widely used and supported, there is a big cost to adding features to a CDN. the means dont justify the ends.
    - shmerl 10y ago
      And how is it supposed to be used if CDNs don't support it? Sounds like a circular dependency to me. Technology is here, but without infrastructure it's close to impossible to use at scale.
      - supergreg 10y ago
        You cut flash out and then the need to support it pops up.
        shmerl 10y ago

jgh 10y ago

ok, are Google planning on supporting HLS if they're ditching flash? I see this site is saying that it does (with their player) -- so does it natively or are these guys doing a transmux in Javascript similar to HLS.js and others?

cpeterso 10y ago
Chrome supports HLS natively on Android, but not desktop. Safari and Edge support HLS natively on desktop. Firefox doesn't support HLS natively on Android or desktop.

ajharrison 10y ago

Steve Jobs was right ... 6 years ago.

supergreg 10y ago
And Stallman was right 12 years ago.

746F7475 10y ago

Absolutely nothing, if your video site is still using flash you are already way behind the times.

taneq 10y ago

"What does this mean for video"? It means I won't ever have goddamn McAfee Antivirus try to install itself on my computer when I update Flash.

eonw 10y ago
this! and i wont have to update flash every few days because of its terrible security.

samsonradu 10y ago

I hate it when I see people talking about Flash as if it's the Web's cancer. Remember Flash pushed the web heavily forward back when we had to install all sorts of desktop applications and codecs just to watch a video or play a simple game. It is an optional plugin that you can always disable. Not having it at all would lead to a poorer UX in my opinion. Can't Chrome just have a toggle Flash on/off in the toolbar and get over it? And let Flash die naturally, when HTML5 catches up? Edit Also the propaganda [1] against it makes me laugh. The reason Google wants it out is probably because it can't track the ads inside Flash apps. [1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3160644/Google-Mozilla-pull-plug-Adobe-Flash-Tech-giants-disable-program-browsers-following-critical-security-flaw.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3160644/Googl... "Leaked documents have revealed the program has a serious vulnerability that lets hackers take over anyone's computer."

samsonradu 10y ago
Hell I could rant about this for long. And some people who say Flash is insecure (it probably is) are also the ones who install ad-blockers, antiviruses and all sorts of creepy browser extensions. Well that s not safe either, but Steve Jobs said Flash is bad so it must be. However Steve Jobs knew he cannot monetize the web as well as the AppStore so the "open" web was pulled backwards.

jokoon 10y ago

I started to watch a lot of youtube videos recently, but it doesnt seem all of them require EME. Am I wrong? Because it seems I can download them fine with a firefox addon, except a very few of them for obvious copyright reasons. I also rarely see song videos that cannot be downloaded from mp3 conversion websites. No idea if those websites are legal or not. Anyway, on one side you have youtube advertising and adblockers, on the other side they want to force people to stay online and not use the content offline, but they can't have all of them not block ads. I really wonder about the real cost of hosting youtube videos, and the money they make from ads on youtube. I think there is a huge loss there. Youtube RED might solve this.

esturk 10y ago

Steam is still using Flash for their stats page. http://store.steampowered.com/stats/ http://store.steampowered.com/stats/ As others have mentioned, Google finance is as well as well as other finance sites. Makes you wonder how someone haven't introduced any HTML5 graphs for stats yet...

juleska 10y ago

They could fix the Chrome problems on Mac before to do this. I just can't see any youtube video on Chrome, it simple doesn't work :), thx

ludamad 10y ago

Sad that shumway isn't mature enough yet to replace Flash completely, else this could have been a seamless change

exodust 10y ago

This article has the vibe of drawing attention to something else other than the subject of the piece. Is that unfair to say? Not for me to judge I suppose, but the final paragraph says it all. Anyway, a couple of things from the article... > "Netflix have already switched to HTML5...due to the benefits of HTML5 based streaming" > "...HTML5 outperforms plugin based playback in almost every department" > "...delivering high bandwidth products such as 360° video and Virtual Reality in a more efficient manor." Such generic statements! Netflix HTML5 playback in both Chrome and Firefox is limited to 720p. That's not a benefit and is why I must use silverlight in IE on Windows 7 to watch 1080p Netflix. They really should cover things like this to better reflect how things actually are. The claims about HTML5 performance over plugins should only come from people who have done side by side comparisons. So many bloggers telling it according to something they read somewhere. Finally, "360° video in a more efficient manor". I like efficient manors, even bad manors, but again this claim should be backed up with evidence. If you look at VR, if you look at 360 video, the evidence for better performance in HTML5 for these technologies is simply not there. Even with still image panoramas, anyone who has made these in something like KrPano will know that Flash panoramas generally outperform HTML5 panoramas. Smoother motion, better memory management, better cross-browser performance. We may wish it weren't so, but we should get facts straight regardless of whether it leaves HTML (which we love) a little bruised in the comparison.