"Flash not coming to Chrome for Android", says Adobe

Yesterday, we got a little taste of Chrome for Android, when Google launched Chrome Beta for Android 4.0. While this swanky browser works well for a Beta, we did notice one gaping hole in the feature list and that was the lack of Flash support. While this does help in keeping annoying ads from loading on webpages, other functional components also fail to load, which leave you with big rectangular gray blocks around the web page.

No Flash please!

Obviously, many users were peeved with this and to add to the disappointment, Adobe released a statement saying that they won’t release a plug-in for Flash for Chrome mobile after all. To quote them, “Adobe is no longer developing Flash Player for mobile browsers, and thus Chrome for Android Beta does not support Flash content. Flash Player continues to be supported within the current Android browser."

So much for looking forward to another great browser for Android. Fear not, though, as the stock browser offers all the features the Chrome does (Incognito mode, etc) and is fully GPU accelerated and most importantly, supports Flash. The company is focusing their Flash software mainly for creating and publishing advanced gaming and premium video content. Adobe is also working on moving towards HTML 5 and is collaborating with Google and many others to make this happen. Adobe will continue to support Flash for desktops, but eventually, all sites will move to HTML 5, which will offer true hardware acceleration for richer graphics in web pages. If you’re a heavy user of flash on mobiles then, this is probably not the browser for you.