Google mocks Steve Jobs with Chrome-Flash merger

When Steve Jobs met Google boss Eric Schmidt for coffee late last week, they may or may not have reached some common ground on certain hot-button subjects. But odds are, they didn't see eye-on-eye on Adobe Flash. As Jobs prepares to ship his much ballyhooed Apple iPad without even the possibility of running Flash - which he …

[M Gale]

Flash is a festoring boil on the anus of the Internet, but...

I suppose I can see one reason for Flash: Flash games developers not wanting you snarfing their source code or scripting in high-score cheats and such. With Javascript, that's relatively trivial to do. With a binary blob, less trivial.

Unless of course there's a deconstructor for SWF files that does the flashy equivalent of "view page source", in which case.. I'll go get me coat.

[brym]

So...

...your biggest gripe appears to be that you cannot view the ActionScript inside? Buy a SWF decompiler, and go get your coat. Flash isn't going away any time soon. Get over it.

[M Gale]

My.. gripe?

Read my post. Put your glasses on and read it again.

Then maybe you'll not fail as hard.

[Anonymous Coward]

Decompilers...

"Unless of course there's a deconstructor for SWF files...."

There are several decompilers out there, although thankfully they are easily defeated by simple obfuscation techniques or for the lazy, a growing selection of idiot proof third party swf encrypters.

[mdm]

Get your coat - sorry couldn't resist that one. Your post is perfectly intelligent.

AS3 code is compiled into a SWF as text. Easy to retrieve. AS2 is hex but there's a Chinese decompiler for that.

[Joel Fiser]

Kiss it.

I saw this response on Google's blog. I think it sums it up pretty nicely...

For all you flash haters and HTML5/Javascript elitist, KISS MY SHINY FLASHY CHROME COATED BEHIND!!

[M Gale]

No, thanks. You probably don't wipe properly.

Not so much "flash hater". "Flash in stupid places" hater, and "entire sites made from flash for no good reason" hater, yes.

http://clockworkradio.bravehost.com

Done by a relative of mine. Really nice content, funny as hell.. but god, I really do get tempted to rewrite the whole thing in XHTML and hand him a copy. Funny thing is, he's a complete Mactard. I remember him looking over my shoulder at an AMD-powered laptop running Ubuntu and going "oh, a shitty wintel box". I ...didn't say anything. Intrepid Birdman, indeed.

[Joel Fiser]

GoogleTV

From Adobe:

"This the result of the collaboration between Adobe and Google and more will come from this collaboration, so stay tuned."

Hmmm... What do suppose is going to power GoogleTV?

Anybody like to guess?

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as we love to hate Flash...

It's not going away any time soon so if we are going to be lumbered with it, we might as well make it work a little more smoothly. I've never liked the unstable relationship that browsers have with plugins and this is just the ticket to get that ironed out.

[Anonymous Coward]

Follow the money

Silicon Valley is very incestuous, and driven by VC's making money behind the scenes. Money has moved, probably indirectly, from Adobe to Google to drive this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Horrific

The last thing I want is an excuse for flash to remain alive any longer.

"Well, it's the biggest security flaw we have installed on our machines since windows itself. let's keep that fucker alive for a few more years for literally no good reason." Utter, utter stupidity.

What's that? it plays games? Yeah right it does. Badly.

[Steve Taylor 3]

Re: Horrific

> What's that? it plays games? Yeah right it does. Badly.

Is there a better alternative? (Hint: 'no').

And no, I'm not interested in a computer where I can't play and write games.

[Anonymous Coward]

Curious

Apparently it's possible to play (and write) games on Flash-free systems. So I've heard, anyway.

I'll let you get back to FarmVille now.

[Sean Timarco Baggaley]

Er, yes, actually:

www.unity3d.com

Pisses on Flash (and pretty much everything else) from a vast height. And it's been doing rather well too.

Yes, it requires a plug-in, but it's *designed* for games. Which Flash isn't. And the IDE f*cking rocks too.

(Disclaimer: I worked for these guys a few years ago.)

[Adam Salisbury]

Flash games?

So your idea of 'gaming' is FarmVille et al then? If you want to code software, and this goes to everyone, get some nuts and do it properly. Flash is for people who can't make it as real programmers IMHO.

It's a blighted turd that Adobe should be outright disbanded for.

[salada2k]

Why the fuss

Jobs was right, Flash is a bug ridden plug-in. Good for some things, totally overused in others. Gets crashy. In EVERY browser. After years, still the same unfixed piece of crap. Good on Jobs for [putting his foot down and backing something that could potentially be better, or at least compete with Flash so that Adobe may finally fix it. Boo to Google for making a move that is clearly there to annoy Jobs rather than be any benefit to the net community at large. Childish games. Losing so much respect for Google these days.

[Adam Salisbury]

Here Here

I don't much like Jobs' attitude but he's bang on the money this time round.

Google had been come up with a new mantra because if "don't be evil" was fooling anyone before, it sure shouldn't be now!

[Mike G]

Can't say I've noticed

Can't say I've ever noticed any crashes down to flash. I've seen firefox disappear on it's own on pure html pages many a time. Should we ban html or firefox because it crashes now and again?

[konstructa]

Hold On

HTML5 can't do what flash does YET. It's going to take lots of time to catch up and Google has not even made On2 open source. Smart move by Google. Denouncing flash this early would only hurt the web.

http://m.industry.bnet.com/technology/10006536/how-html-5-will-change-the-web-and-why-it-matters/

[Citizen Kaned]

flash is....

as he says a buggy piece of software. in fact its almost as badly written as itunes on the win platform. that does more damage than most virii and is what i most get asked to sort out between friends and family. for me i would never install any apple software on my machines (well, quicktime maybe but thats a POS too)

[Anonymous Coward]

huh?

And how pray tell does it do damage? You're talking nonsense

[Bilgepipe]

Video

As long as HTML5 takes over for internet video, Google can do what they like with Flash because I'll never, ever need it. I simply avoid sites that require it, such as movie sites and suchlike.

Wait, I thought Google didn't like plugins?

[richard 69]

advertising company + flash=

nightmare...

which already exists on so many websites with the irritating flash adverts, do google want more of this?

actually of course they do, they are an advertising company.....

[StooMonster]

+1

First thing I thought when I read this news, Google embedding Flash in the browser means no Flash Blocking to avoid horrid Flash-based advertising.

[Anonymous Coward]

Buggy

Dont get me started on buggy, has Steve not looked at Safari on the MAC for sometime. Keeps crashing on non flash enable sites...Firefox running fine tho

As someone pointed out this is more likely for Google TV.

[DrXym]

People hate on flash for little reason

If a page is stuffed with Flash objects (e.g. adverts) of course performance is going to suffer. If those adverts were served by equivalent HTML5, performance would be no better and people would still be bitching. In many browsers performance would actually be worse because browsers simply aren't built for timing critical animation. There is no doubt HTML5 combined with AJAX apis is a better solution for some traditional Flash scenarios but it is no magic wand.

Besides if performance is so bad just don't use the plugin at all, or install an Ad / Flash blocker so you can selectively choose what Flash content you want to use. AdBlockPro is very effective. Adverts - no, Video players - yes. It's very simple.

As for Apple's decision to exclude it, the answer has nothing to do with performance or security. The iPhone & iPad could easily support Flash without incurring performance issues. For example, Flash objects could be instantiated only after the user clicks on a place holder with limits on how the number of active instances. But then people could get a wealth of rich interactive apps without paying Apple for the privilege. We can't have that now can we?

[Anonymous Coward]

People 'hate on' Flash because it sucks on OS X

You've clearly never 'experienced' Flash on OS X. It's slow and buggy as hell, and it's guaranteed to crash your browser (and consume 95% of your CPU in the process). Laptop sounds like a hairdryer and is burning a hole in your knees? That'll be Flash.

It may be wonderful on Windows boxes (no idea personally, as I don't use them). On OS X (and hence the iPhone OS) it sucks donkey balls. It has EVERYTHING to do with performance. It's dreadful. Jobs is right to want nothing more to do with it.

[Evil Inside]

RE:People 'hate on' Flash because it sucks on OS X

Without wanting to get into a flame war over it, but isnt it possible that flash sucks on OS X because of OS X, quite happy to admit Flash isnt brilliant, but lets not overlook an possibility.

[Volker Hett]

possible

but not much so. Other interpreters run just fine on OS X and Flash fails on recent 64bit Linux, too.

[chr0m4t1c]

Possible but unlikely

On my Wintel machines Flash sucks badly in Firefox and Chrome, but oddly is often OK with IE.

It was awful on my old WM5 and WM6 phones too.

From what I read elsewhere things are no better on Linux.

So while it is slightly possible that the OS is the issue, this actually looks more like the use of undocumented API calls when used with IE or some other integration that isn't available in the other browsers.

When your supposed cross-platform product only works with one particular OS/browser combination you really need to be working a bit harder on it.

If Adobe were saying "sorry that Flash is a bit rubbish on Firefox, it's because there isn't a hook to allow us to do X in hardware, so it has to be done in software" then we might have a bit more sympathy.

[/etc]

Yes, of course

"but isnt it possible that flash sucks on OS X because of OS X"?

Yes, that's right. It's because of the platform -- because ... wait for it ... Adobe hasn't cared much about that platform. It didn't think it mattered.

Adobe hasn't bothered much with Flash on OS X for years, because it thought that Windows was the only platform that mattered. Flash is is utter crap on everything except Windows. It's down to how many resources Adobe have put in over the years. Apparently, they only had *one * developer -- a single person! -- working on the Linux version.

Now it's payback time for the bastards -- because, suddenly, with the runaway success of the iPhone and with the emergence of the iPad, and with the increasing importance of mobile devices in general, it turns out that Windows is *not* the only platform that matters.

[Anonymous Coward]

1 person is right

Why should they pay for lots of expensive developers for linux when freetards,

a) provide no income stream

b) are the most whiny mewly complainers

c) only account for less than 1% of desktops but account for 99% of moaning and whinging on the internet

I'd rather they put that person on OSX instead, at least they pay for software now and again

[DrXym]

Don't be so quick to blame Flash

Don't be so quick to blame Flash. Plugins are hosted by a browser and there is a lot of interaction between the browser and a plugin. A demanding plugin such as a Flash animation will be repeatedly calling the browser's implementation of NPN_ForceRedraw, NPN_InvalidateRect, screaming at the browser to sent repaint events to the plugin. The browser must receive events for the plugin and repeatedly call it NPP_HandleEvent. Mac plugins are typically windowless because Carbon doesn't not allow windows to be nested so the burden on the browser is greater than other platforms. Plugins and host browsers can even be a mix of Carbon or Cocoa based which complicates things even further.

If a Mac browser were not handling these calls in an efficient way it could easily bog down the whole browser, especially if there is more than one plugin running. So for all the complaints directed at the plugin, in reality it is probably a combination of a lot of things and the operating system and browser would deserve their own fair share of the blame.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its jobs fault

Apple deliberatley won't collaborate on providing the necessary acceleration hooks that flash has available on a pc to make it run better. I'm sure Adobe would love to have it run better on OSX considering they sell a lot of creative software to mac people, but Apple obstruct them from providing a better plugin

[Anonymous Coward]

Flashing

look, at the end of the day, Flash is needed because HTTP5 is based on the Flash engine. Without TCP/IP, Flash is basically useless anyway, unless you only use Email, and in that case you don't really need the Internet because Email goes over a separate protocol to web traffic. I only ever use the Email protocol to browse the web, meaning I don't use the Flash engine.

[peter 5]

@Flashing

Why have you started posting anonymously, amanfromMars?

[Anonymous Coward]

@ Flashing

Dude, you totally picked the wrong place to attempt to construct an argument out of recycled bits of half-understood jargon...

[Anonymous Coward]

Facts

Point out one thing there that is incorrect in my post. Please, I am awaiting an explanation of exactly what I said wrong.

PS grow a brain.

[Galidron]

Wrong

Incorrect statements.

"Without TCP/IP, Flash is basically useless anyway, unless you only use Email, and in that case you don't really need the Internet because Email goes over a separate protocol to web traffic."

Email uses TCP/IP so you can't use email without it.

The Internet uses far more then the HTTP protocol. The Email Protocol, SMTP, uses the internet.

Most Email clients these days are able to use HTTP email which means you can have flash embedded in email.

"I only ever use the Email protocol to browse the web, meaning I don't use the Flash engine."

When you use HTTP email you are using the web protocol to view the "Internet" if the email message is not using HTTP it isn't "browsing" the web in any way.

Generally browsing the web refers to visiting web pages which is at best difficult to do inside of an email client.

[Gilbo]

Hahaha

This is absolutely, positively the most amusing piece of trolling I've ever been lucky enough to read.

[McToo]

Seconded!

That is all

[Barry Tabrah]

One good thing

At least by integrating flash into the browser it can be properly sandboxed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting that Adobe's actually helping out on this

which rather suggests that they're running scared and actually prepared to try and do something about the state of Flash and the amount of bad press it's getting them. As for Google's motives, well, they're no less cloudy than usual, but you can bet that driving data through their Global Interwebs Tracking System is at least tangentially involved.

Let's not overlook the other net benefit of a standards-compliant browser that plays nicely with Flash: hastening the death of IE

[Il Midga di Macaroni]

Long term, short term

I think everyone agrees Flash needs a successor in the medium term. Well actually it needs one now, preferably earlier, but personally I want one that's rock solid and highly efficient, so let's have some good geeks do some long hours on it before it hits the streets.

But in the short term, web site developers aren't going to suddenly switch from Flash to HTML5 just because Chrome doesn't support it. If IE and Firefox simultaneously decided to drop Flash support they might - or at least, 60% of them might. Chrome just doesn't have the market share to make web developers do anything at all.

Paris because she wrote Flash.

[John 62]

@Barry Tabrah

I was going to ask if being integrated into the browser would mean if wouldn't be properly sandboxed.

Sadly Homestarrunner.com hasn't been updated for a while. Maybe the brothers chaps are moving away from Flash. Weebl uses Flash, but exports his best work to YouTube, which will all be HTML5y soon or can already be used on the iPhone/Pad. Anyway, my point is that if Weebl content isn't dependent on Flash and Homestarrunner is going away (*sobs*) then who needs Flash?

And yeah, as Richard 69 said, Google makes money from ads. Many ads are in Flash format. So Google integrates the ad platform into Chrome.

[Evil Inside]

deja vu : browser integrated into OS

A browser-based Chrome operating system doesnt that smack of IE incorporated into WIndows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux

Linux users prefer to get their Flash from somebody other than Adobe. Which seems pretty sound to me given Adobe's security record. So Google may well be driving Linux users away from Chrome with this policy.

I suspect the whole thing is part of a plan to try to make Chrome the preferred browser for youtube anyway. Noticed the Chrome ads at youtube recently? How long before Google do a Microsoft and start building functionality into their sites that will only work properly with Chrome. I smell a big fat antitrust action coming over the horizon.

The thing is that it's very easy to live without Google's search engine. It's even easier to get by without youtube. Google, their fans and a load of sheep work on the principal that Google is dominant now and remain so forever. How many companies have held a similarly dominant position in other markets in the past and have subsequently withered to nothing or been eaten by some upstart? The normal cause of their downfall in complacency. Google will no doubt go the same way. Adopts Humpty Gokart voice: Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday...

[RPF]

Bye-bye Chrome (hello Camino)

Well that's Chrome un-installed from my (OS X) machine, then!

Would I trust the advertiser Google to "do no evil" with Flash? errr, no.

Flash is just a battery-cooking app. in OS X (and not much else is)

Steve's da man!

[Anonymous Coward]

Camino...

...is an excellent browser. Fast and light.

Good choice, Sir.

[mdm]

Why is Steve "The Man"?

He keeps ripping you off, selling you overpriced software and hardware.

I use Macs, it's the industry standard in my profession and I have always loved apple computers. I used the the first Mac Classic that was imported to the UK when I was a nipper and I was hooked.

But Apple has gone off, and it doesn't taste like cider either. Jobs should move on and go and enjoy all the cash he's taken from us.

[Volker Hett]

A browser plugin API won't help.

Adobe still has to provide a useable plugin. Last I looked the flash player is still produced by Adobe, although they claim that they get help from Microsoft and not from Apple and Linux Distributors and are thus unable to provide performant flash players on anything but Windows.

From my point of view the flash player is basically an interpreter for a scripting language, so open sourcing the Flash player might help on Linux since there are lots of very capable programmers working on interpreters for several scripting languages. Those OSS flash players can then be ported to OS-X and the performance issue as well as the bugs will be solved.

Only problem left, Apple doesn't allow any interpreters on their mobile platform except their very own Javascript engine in Safari.

[Anonymous Coward]

Comments display a depressing level of knowledge

I wonder have any of the commenters here ever actually tried to do the same thing in flash and HTML/JavaScript/AJAX? I had to port a RIA from Flash (which I had created in about a week) to JavaScript et al. The final JavaScript version was slower, the rendered type was hideous, the size of the application was larger and it took about 4 times as long to develop.

I for one am far more interested in the opinions of developers on development topics than the opinions of grumpy teenage web users.

Flash may not be the dominant RIA platform in a decade but right now, as it has for many years, it offers developers a rich set of tools, a nice language, a pretty good run-time and a huge community of developers such that anyone, from an absolute beginner to experienced programmers can dip in and become quite competent in a short time.

Thumbs up Google on this one.

[jubtastic1]

The thing is

If I were El Jobso and I'd had to endure another company's buggy shitty code making my products look bad for an entire decade, I'd bury the wankers the first chance I got as well.

You would have to be retarded to trust that company to not screw you over again no matter what they promise.

[Anonymous Coward]

So can HTML5 do the do?

I keep reading about Apple and HTML5 and Flash, but can HTML5 do what Flash does?

Security concerns aside, I would class Flash as a very swish and interactive presentation system.

So does HTML5 do AV streaming under programmer control, vectors, with generation on the fly and morphing and animation and such like? Flash can edit and load/save bitmaps too - I presume that the answer is yes otherwise HTML5 wouldn't be an option, but what about the design tools, programmer tools, control encapsulation, code obfuscation etc.

Flash does all that too!

[mdm]

Infant Standard

Cupertino are being disingenuous about the flaws of flash player and their premature adoption of an unformed and immature standard, HTML5.

One day HTML5 may be able to do all of the lovely things that flash does so well for us. Primarily allowing us to develop applications and content across platforms and channels without massive development costs of deploying those applications in completely different languages for multitple operating systems and devices

Right now it's just a standard it has only been partly adopted, by some apple browsers. It's not fully supported because it's not fully defined. http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/

This is because of disagreement between the major stakeholders in deciding, for example, what video standard should be used in HTML5, guess what Apple want to use H264. So basically HTML5 just isn't ready yet.

Jobs is behaving like a spoilt child, he wants the shiny spaceship in the toy store, yet he wants one life size and fully functioning. It just doesn't exist. At the same time his tantrums are impeding the build of the spaceship.

Adobe have made serious errors with Flash, primarily releasing updates with security holes, memory leaks etc but Apple have also. It's the world we live in. Jobs doesn't seem to able to accept that. If Jobs would allow flash into the iPhone and iPad developing applications would become even cheaper and easier for everyone. Even Apple.

Ho hum.

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe involvement?

"In a blog post on Tuesday, Mountain View announced that Flash has been integrated with Chrome's developer build and that it plans to offer similar integration with its shipping browser as quickly as possible"

So Google have written the code themselves and not let Adobe do it for them? That would make sense, considering how well Flash performs on certain Linux builds (and on OSX).

Of course, if Adobe have had anything to do with it then it's the beginning of the end of Chrome!

[John Savard]

Standards

Flash is extremely widespread, in use on many important and useful sites on the Internet. Improving support for Flash on the Chrome browser makes it a more practical alternative to Internet Explorer and Firefox. And Flash support of some sort will continue to be needed until other non-proprietary standards, like HTML 5, displace it (just about) completely: it would be unrealistic to think otherwise.

[Niall]

Flash is fine for me

..in Chrome on Ubuntu 32bit.

[Marc 25]

@flashing

[quote]"look, at the end of the day, Flash is needed because HTTP5 is based on the Flash engine. Without TCP/IP, Flash is basically useless anyway, unless you only use Email, and in that case you don't really need the Internet because Email goes over a separate protocol to web traffic. I only ever use the Email protocol to browse the web, meaning I don't use the Flash engine."[/quote]

I nonimate this for FOTW

[Anonymous Coward]

@Marc 25

FOTW? I'd go for technical gibberish of the year if there was such an award.

[Law]

lets hope...

... they sort out the mac chrome + flash issues quickly then... when going on flash enabled sites, cpu goes 100% and pages freeze for about 15 seconds while flash loads. :(

[Chimaera]

Good news

Flash isn't going anywhere, yes it's overused but it's still the only platform that allows you to do rich data visualisation and animation. Half the opinions here seem to be that Flash = video and ads.

Also i don't know what some of you have been doing with your computers but i can't remember the last time my browser crashed. Most of the time i've seen it happen is because of a JavaScript error not Flash. If Flash is crashing your browser that regularly i'd have to question the knowledge of the user...not the software.

Oh and it's impressive to see how many gullible people there are who think that Jobs wants rid of flash because he wants to make the internet a better place...it's 100% about maintaining app store income for his shareholders.

[Anonymous Coward]

*bangs head against wall*

"Also i don't know what some of you have been doing with your computers but i can't remember the last time my browser crashed."

Windows user by any chance?

Good. Now go back and read the BAZILLION comments about how much Flash sucks on OS X. From, like, you know, PEOPLE WHO USE IT. Thanks.

"Oh and it's impressive to see how many gullible people there are who think that Jobs wants rid of flash because he wants to make the internet a better place...it's 100% about maintaining app store income for his shareholders."

I refer the gentleman to the answer I gave some moments ago.

[Anonymous Coward]

hehe

And Flash having problems under OSX and other Jobsian products wouldnt have anything to do with said products being crappy themselves?

Not that flash isnt without its faults, but sometimes its not as simple as blaming one thing when you could actually support it better but choose not to.

[mdm]

What post was that?

If you post as anonymous, then it's impossible to be sure which comment you're refering to.

I assume all I have to do is look for regurgitated reposted Cupertino PR.

"Good. Now go back and read the BAZILLION comments about how much Flash sucks on OS X".

Don't beleive everything they tell you. How ever many bazillion posts you read. Maybe you're talking about the IDE not the player. Or maybe you're using a PPC? Get an intel mac, flash player runs fine. Thanks.

Oh and if your mac is running slow then perhaps you could by a zeon. It sounds like your browser is crashing a lot. Funny those same pages don't crash on windows. Blame flash, yeah that makes sense...

[Majid]

Finally someone who gets it.

Flash player is an application platform. You can write apps with it. The last thing Apple wants is that people can write apps that can be used on apple platforms of which they didnt get a percentage.

It is about dollars (and lots of them), not the well being of the internet.

[fuckwit]

Aphorism

This is a simple case of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'..

[blamblamblam]

Some good news about Flash at last

Yes, it's great news, and great timing - hopefully will undercut the iPad slightly.

[Nick Fisher]

Curious minds want to know

How slightly are you hoping for? 3%? 5%? A little bit more slightly than that?

[Andy Moreton]

The real reason Jobs hates flash

is that it enables people to play games without paying money to Apple for an App.

[mhenriday]

I think the point here is that Google

is refreshingly (?) non-ideological (with a notable exception in the present China flap, in which the company seems to have committed itself to an alliance with Hillary Rodham Clinton & Co) in their approach to developing apps ; they work to develop HTLM5 as an alternative to Flash, which is liberating, but recognise at the same time that Flash enjoys an enormous market share and therefore endeavour to improve the Flash plug-in. As long as Google stick to this latter approach and eschew the former, the firm is likely to have a bright future....

Henri