Chrome Will Freeze All Auto-Play Flash Ads From September 1

Google has decided to freeze non-important Flash files in its Chrome browser starting September 1. This will affect all auto-play Flash ads which will now be defaulted to click-to-play in the browser. The Flash-blocking feature was introduced earlier this year in a beta version of Google Chrome citing battery life as the main reason behind the blocking since Flash ads consumed a lot of battery juice. Disabling auto-play Flash videos could also make the web more secure.


This move will not block essential Flash content such as embedded video players which will still be allowed to run automatically. On the other hand, non-important Flash content, mostly advertisements, will be automatically paused. However, users can right-click over the freezed Flash video or ad and select "Run this" if they want to unfreeze an ad or video. Since, Google automatically converts most Flash ads placed on its AdWords network to HTML5, therefore there is no worry for such advertisers. But other sites might simply stop accepting Flash ads entirely.

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