After Chrome partially supported Flash, the company decided to stop indexing pages with Flash content on the web with Google Search, thus making them much harder to find.
Adobe's timeline for ending Flash support is just a year away, so Google has decided to reduce the display of Flash content in Chrome starting in December 2020.
In an update to its webmasters blog, Google says it will stop supporting Flash “later this year,” meaning very soon. Google Search will “ignore” Flash content on web pages. It will also stop indexing standalone SWF (Shockwave Flash) files.
"Most users and websites will not see anything from this change," said Dong-Hwi Lee, engineering manager at Google.
Adobe launched Flash in 1996, a year before Google did. According to Search Engine Land, Google began indexing Flash files in 2008, prompting developers and designers to create animations, games, and more.
Of course, now that Google Search has stopped indexing websites with Flash content, it gives administrators an additional incentive to stop using Flash and use HTML5 technologies that all modern browsers support.
Google disabled Flash in Chrome by default starting with Chrome 76 in July. Microsoft is also dropping support for Flash in its Chromium-based Edge browser. Mozilla also disabled Flash in Firefox 69 in September.
