It's finally happening. Long regarded as a miserable blight on the world wide web, Flash is going to the great tech graveyard in the sky - or perhaps to the depths of hell - and a date has been set for its demise.

Today, Adobe announced that it is "planning to end-of-life Flash", and said it will "stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020". For now, Adobe remains "committed to supporting Flash through 2020", and will continue to distribute security patches, maintaining OS and browser compatibility, and even adding new features and capabilities "where needed".

The company also said that it plans "to move more aggressively to [end-of-life] Flash in certain geographies where unlicensed and outdated versions of Flash Player are being distributed."

The demise of Flash is far from a surprise, and some would say it's long overdue, particularly given the security risks that it's presented over the years. With the availability of newer web standards, such as HTML5 and WebGL, Flash has little reason to exist; major browsers have already begun phasing out their support, including Firefox, Chrome, and Microsoft Edge, which started blocking Flash content by default with the Windows 10 Creators Update.

Find out how Microsoft plans to phase out Flash from Edge and Internet Explorer here.

Source: Adobe