Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash was the plugin that powered web animation, games and video for two decades, starting life as FutureSplash Animator in 1996 before Macromedia and then Adobe (2005, $3.4 billion) owned it. Apple's iPhone ban and HTML5 killed it: Adobe ended support on 31 December 2020 and blocked Flash content weeks later.

Timeline

1996

1996 Launch

FutureSplash Animator ships

Vector animation tool and browser plugin.

December 1996 Acquisition

Macromedia buys FutureWave

FutureSplash becomes Macromedia Flash 1.0.

2002

March 2002 Version

Flash MX brings video

Embedded video turns Flash from an animation plugin into the web's video runtime.

2005

May 2005 Feature

YouTube standardises on the Flash player

The biggest video site on earth runs on Flash, the peak of its indispensability.

3 December 2005 Acquisition

Adobe completes $3.4B Macromedia acquisition

Flash becomes Adobe's web runtime.

2008

2008 Peak

Installed on ~99% of internet-connected desktops

Adobe's own reach figures make Flash the most ubiquitous runtime in computing.

2010

29 April 2010 Incident

Steve Jobs publishes "Thoughts on Flash"

Apple's public case for a Flash-free mobile web.

2011

9 November 2011 Decline

Adobe kills mobile Flash

Development of Flash Player for mobile browsers ends.

2015

14 July 2015 Incident

Mozilla blocks Flash by default

After a run of zero-day exploits leaked from Hacking Team, Firefox temporarily blocks every Flash version.

2017

25 July 2017 Shutdown announced

Adobe announces Flash end-of-life

Coordinated with Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and Facebook.

2020

31 December 2020 Shutdown

Flash Player support ends

Content blocked from running on 12 January 2021.

2021

12 January 2021 Incident

The kill switch flips

Flash Player's built-in time bomb refuses to run content, ending playback even for the nostalgic.

Ownership

FutureWave Software 1996–1996 Founded FutureSplash Animator, evolved from SmartSketch

Macromedia 1996–2005 Acquisition, undisclosed Renamed it Flash 1.0

Adobe 2005–2020 Acquisition, $3.4B Announced April 2005, completed December 2005

Key figures

Metric	Value	As of	Confidence
Market share (%) ▲	75%	April 2010	Reported Share of web video delivered via Flash, per Adobe claims quoted in "Thoughts on Flash"

Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate

Why it shut down

Official line: Adobe: "open standards such as HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly have matured... and serve as viable alternatives for Flash content", announcing end-of-life for 31 December 2020.

Our analysis: Flash was doomed the day the iPhone shipped without it. Steve Jobs' 2010 "Thoughts on Flash" made the security, battery and touch arguments public, HTML5 matured, and every browser vendor scheduled its removal. Adobe blocked Flash content from running on 12 January 2021.

History

From stick figures to YouTube

Flash began as FutureSplash Animator in 1996, a vector animation tool from Jonathan Gay's FutureWave, acquired by Macromedia that December and renamed Flash. For fifteen years it was multimedia on the web: Newgrounds games, Homestar Runner, banner ads, entire restaurant websites, and the original YouTube player all ran on it. Adobe inherited Flash with its $3.4 billion Macromedia acquisition in 2005; at its height the player was installed on effectively every desktop that touched the internet.

Thoughts on Flash

The iPhone shipped in 2007 without Flash, and in April 2010 Steve Jobs published "Thoughts on Flash", an open letter cataloguing its crashes, battery drain, security holes and touch-hostility. Adobe surrendered mobile Flash in 2011, HTML5 video and WebGL absorbed its use cases, and in July 2017 Adobe scheduled the end for 31 December 2020. On 12 January 2021 the player began refusing to run content at all: a rare case of a technology not just abandoned but actively switched off. Preservation projects like Ruffle and Flashpoint now keep two decades of games and animation playable.

Timeline

How it looked