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Comment by dogma1138 | Hacker News Reader

I got plugins disabled by default in Chrome for ages now (right click run plugin when needed).

Before that on FF i had an add on that disabled autorun for flash also (very similar to how chrome does it with plugins gotta right click to load it).

But if Google does it only for none Google adnetworks that's going to be a huge lawsuit. The article doesn't really clarify why would it work on Google own networks because they convert to HTML5 or because they will white list their own stuff.

TBH we could've gotten rid of Flash years ago, Google was actually a big supporter for Flash, it was very important for them at some point in time, Google Chat, Gmail Extensions, Google Wave, and most importantly getting high bit rate video on YouTube off the ground (DXVA, OpenGL support was critical for YouTube and every other streaming site out-there), and heck Google promoted Flash on Android until JB as their big gotcha over Apple..

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  But if Google does it only for none Google adnetworks that's going to be a huge lawsuit. The article doesn't really clarify why would it work on Google own networks because they convert to HTML5 or because they will white list their own stuff.

It's because their ad network converts stuff, at least that's the only way I can read these sentences:

  Google said advertisers who are worried about having their ads switched off should consider converting their Flash artwork to HTML5. According to the cyber-goliath, "most Flash ads uploaded to [Google] AdWords are automatically converted to HTML5."
  So, in other words, if you're not on Google's ad network, you're locked out of Chrome – unless you also switch to HTML5 artwork.

I've read it, but I've also read the "most" part in it so it wasn't clear what will they do with Flash adds that cannot be converted.

The opening subtitle can be also interpreted both ways, in fact most people would say that "If your ads aren't on web giant's network, they better be HTML5 – or they're dead to Chrome." means that Google will block Flash from every source but Google.

You don't need to be on Google's ad network to use swiffy (the conversion tool that they are using), it's open source.

Is the conversion tool actually open source? The Swiffy Wikipedia page says "There is a server-side component (source currently not public) that converts SWF to an intermediate representation serialized as JSON.".

Oh sorry, I was thinking of shumway. Swiffy isn't open source, but it is free at least, so third party ad networks can still use it.

> I got plugins disabled by default in Chrome for ages now (right click run plugin when needed).

that should be the default. And that's also going to be impossible now those annoying bits will be HTML5.

Well it's the chicken and the egg, you don't like Flash you block it, Google blocks it you have to deal with HTML5 now, it's the same thing as with Adblock...

People don't like ads they use adblockers, site revenues go down advertisers find new and even more invasive ways to display ads. Wont be surprise if in a year or 2 how content will work is that all (actual) content on the site will be encrypted and encoded into and then decoded using JS and the only way to get the decryption key is to load and play trough the ad to the end. Heck with how cheap symmetric encryption is becoming on modern CPU's not to mention GPU's it won't cost that much to implement. The CDN runs the content, the CDN runs the ad's one doesn't fully load without the other...

If i was bored enough or evil enough i would write this myself but any evil exec's listening you are free to take this idea :)

There are planty sites which dont work without JS. Guess what I do when I see an empty page..

Get a better adblocker?

Yeah, but it's just an arms race at this point. If I can decrypt the content by performing X, I can make by browser either simulate X or report to your servers that I did X.

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