Partnership Between Google and Adobe's Flash May be in the Works | thechromesource - Google Chrome and Chrome OS News and Forum

Partnership Between Chrome and Adobe’s Flash May Be in the Works

Posted on 29. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey in Rumors

Larry Dignan of ZDNet is publishing a rumor that we may hear an announcement in the coming days of a supposed partnership between Google and Adobe for its Flash technology to be bundled within future versions of Chrome browser. When I first read this report, I was a bit surprised. After all, Google has slowly decided to kill Gears and has set up a HTML5 beta on YouTube, probably the most Flash intensive site on the planet since all videos on the site require the plugin in order to play.

But what does Google have to lose? It feels like this is being said a lot lately, but there is still a lot of the web that uses Flash and if Apple is not going to support it on their mobile platforms now they aren’t going to in the future, either. That creates competitive advantage for Google in its own push to have a platform for users with Android and Chrome OS. Apple has its own benefits, and while many have been calling out that the death of Flash is here that will surely not be true if Google partners up with Adobe.

Perhaps there will be some sort of agreement to help make Flash run faster and secure. After all, those are the two biggest pitfalls of Flash. Many experts would agree that having Flash installed on a browser creates vulnerabilities, and the fact that Adobe has a miniscule security team to try to thwart potential attacks would make Google and its expertise seem like a good match.

But we’ll see. While we’re waiting, take a look at this comparison of Flash vs. HTML5 performance.