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An internet plugin that was responsible for some of the internet’s most beloved viral animations has been officially discontinued.
On January 1, the software company Adobe stopped supporting and updating its Flash Player.
The company has asked users to uninstall the software before it blocks all Flash content starting January 12.
First released in 1996, Flash was instrumental in enabling content creators to create and share animations and games that could be quickly downloaded over a dial-up Internet connection.
It also helped early versions of websites like Youtube stream high-quality videos.
But it has been plagued with security issues and has struggled to keep up as internet technology developed and users switched to mobile phones to surf the web.
In 2010, Steve Jobs wrote a scathing open letter called Thoughts on Flash, in which he criticized the software and explained why it would not be allowed to run on Apple products.
Other brands distanced themselves, and in November 2011, Adobe announced that it would stop supporting Flash for mobile web browsers after several issues.
But the final blow came in 2014 when HTML5 was released, a program that provided many of the same features as Flash but did not require users to install a specific plug-in.
As a result, the popularity of Flash began to wane.
That year, 80% of Chrome users were visiting Flash sites, but in 2017 Google said the number had dropped below 17%.
Large companies like YouTube, Facebook, and Netflix stopped using Flash, and in 2017, Adobe announced that discontinue it completely in 2020.
Many are mourning the demise of the software, which has become synonymous with the early days of the Internet.
Meanwhile, other Internet users have expressed concern that years of content will be lost when Flash stops working forever.
Developers are working on alternative software that can support older Flash content, and a blog called The Internet Archive currently houses more than 2,000 items.
