It's been a long time coming, but YouTube has finally made the switch from Flash to HTML 5 and no one seems to really care about that.

A few years ago the mere thought or utterance of the idea that Flash had to be replaced was considered heresy and people were burned on online pyres. Since then things have changed considerably and Adobe's Flash has become much less relevant to the online world. So much so that when YouTube decided to move to HTML 5 and ditch Flash, no one even blinked.

This kind of measure would have been difficult in the past because it's not enough to make it happen at the source. You also need to have internet browsers that are capable of handling this kind of format and they needed to have the right technologies in place. Above all else, YouTube needs to make sure that it's not breaking the Internet and this kind of measure needs to be tested thoroughly.

It's not as simple as turning a switch

People might think that YouTube just turned a switch and things happened overnight, but if that were the case, then they would have done it a long time ago. In fact, a lot of things need to come together for this massive undertaking.

First of all, they need to deal with buffering problems (MediaSource Extensions), they need a powerful codec ready (VP9 in this case), they need powerful encryption methods, WebRTC support (remotely connect to other people, with video and audio) has to be enabled, and of course, users need a reliable full-screen experience.

"Over the last four years, we've worked with browser vendors and the broader community to close those gaps, and now, YouTube uses HTML5 by default in Chrome, IE 11, Safari 8 and in beta versions of Firefox. The benefits of HTML5 extend beyond web browsers, and it's now also used in smart TVs and other streaming devices," wrote Richard Leider, engineering manager at YouTube.

Basically, you can mark this day in the calendar as the official date for the death of Flash, or at least as the culmination of its decline.