Google Chrome will start blocking all Flash content next month

Flash was an integral part of the internet in years past, but it has also been a drag on performance and the source of a great many security vulnerabilities. Today, HTML5 is a better way to get the same sort of interactive content running on the web, and it works on mobile devices. The next phase in Adobe Flash’s agonizingly slow demise starts next month when Google Chrome begins blocking all Flash content.

This will come as part of the Chrome 53 update, which should be available in early September. Chrome 53 will block all the small, non-visible Flash elements on web pages. These are usually tacking platforms and page analytics, but they can slow down page loads just like larger Flash content. This is not Google’s first attempt to de-emphasize Flash on the web. Last year in Chrome 52, Google made most Flash content “click-to-play.”

So, what’s different now? In Chrome 52, the Flash block only applied to Flash objects that were above a certain size, but now that’s being extended to smaller Flash objects. The previous restriction was in place because at the time, there was no reliable way to detect viewability. Now, Chrome’s intersection observer API allows that. You will have the option to enable Flash objects on a page if they are necessary for the experience. If non-visible Flash objects are blocked, an icon in the address bar will alert you.

Google says that all Chrome users will see a benefit from this move. All the Flash objects loading in the background can make page loading sluggish. If you’re on a laptop, Flash also gobbles up power and reduces your battery life. Flash’s innate inefficiency is why it never took off on mobile devices.

While Flash content will be blocked in general, Google is making a temporary exception for some popular sites that still rely heavily upon Flash. Those include Facebook, Twitch, and Yahoo, among others. You’ll be prompted to enable Flash on these sites when loading them, but Google plans to phase out the Flash whitelist over time. When Chrome 55 rolls out in December, HTML5 will become the default experience. It’s not clear how exactly that will affect the whitelist.

The writing is on the wall for Flash; it’s not just Google waging a war on the archaic plug-in. Firefox 48 was announced last week with some Flash content being click-to-play and all Flash being blocked by default in 2017. Even Microsoft is cutting Flash off at the knees. In the Windows 10 anniversary update, Edge uses click-to-play for non-essential Flash elements. Another year or two and we’ll be all done with this.

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Google buys Orbitera, a platform for cloud marketplaces, for $100M+

Google today announced another acquisition that will help the company improve how it competes against Amazon’s AWS, Salesforce and Microsoft in the area of enterprise services, and specifically selling enterprise services in the cloud: it has acquired Orbitera, a startup that developed a platform for buying and selling cloud-based software.

Terms of the deal have not been disclosed but our sources close to the deal tell us it’s just north of $100 million.

This is an acquisition of talent, technology, and existing business. The CEO Marcin Kurc (tellingly) is an alum of AWS. And Google notes that some 60,000 enterprise stacks have already been launched on Orbitera. These include the likes of Adobe, Oracle and Metalogix, who all resell cloud services from third-party vendors as part of their larger enterprise businesses.

“This acquisition will not only improve support of software vendors on Google Cloud Platform but also provides customers with more choice and flexibility in today’s multi-cloud world,” Google said in a statement provided to media.

Kurc notes in his announcement that Google will keep everything running as is, “at this time.”

The startup says its focus is on providing four (end-to-end) aspects of building cloud marketplaces: Packaging and Provisioning, Billing and Cost Optimization, Marketplace and Catalogs, Trials and Lead Management.

It looks like Google will continue to operate that business on behalf of existing users, and maybe to help out its own marketplace for cloud services on its own cloud platform.

“Looking to the future, we’re committed to maintaining Orbitera’s neutrality as a platform supporting multi-cloud commerce. We look forward to helping the modern enterprise thrive in a multi-cloud world,” writes Nan Boden, head of global technology partners at Google.

As Google has grown well beyond its earliest roots as a search company, its reached an interesting relationship with companies that are at turns friends and rivals to its own business interests.

Buying a platform company that works with so many of these in the area of cloud services is an interesting development for Google, and one that it’s keen to try to tread carefully in making.

In this case, Google is trying to reassure customers that even as it sells a platform to sell products, it recognises that the ultimate repository of those products might not be Google itself.

(Whether or not that is the case longer term is another question — in other areas like ads, Google has walked an impartial line and then changed course — but for now there is a viable enough business for Google in remaining a neutral party.)

“We recognize that both enterprise customers and ISVs want to be able to use more than one cloud provider and have a way to conduct product trials and proofs of concept before building a full production deployment, all using their trusted SIs (System Integrators), resellers and normal sales cycles,” Boden notes.

“Orbitera has built a strong ecosystem of enterprise software vendors delivering software to multiple clouds. This acquisition will not only improve the support of software vendors on Google Cloud Platform, but reinforces Google’s support for the multi-cloud world. We’re providing customers with more choice and flexibility when it comes to running their cloud environment.”

Orbitera was co-founded by Firas Bushnaq and Brian Singer, who came up with the idea for the company to fix some of the “transactional and operational challenges associated with selling software” that they encountered while founding and working at previous tech companies.

Based out of West Hollywood, CA, Orbitera had raised some $2 million in funding from angels like Hiten Shah and Arjun Sethi, Double M Partners and Resolute.

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