Google Chrome

Google limits Adobe Flash to save battery life

Google has announced teaming up with Adobe to automatically restrict unwanted, noisy, and distracting Flash content on websites to offer a seamless, rich, interactive and power-efficient experience on the Web. The update has been published on the company’s official blog post by Google Software Engineer and Power Conservationalist, Tommy Li.

This initiative is seen as Google’s answer to several complaints raised against the company regarding its popular browser, Chrome, which allegedly affects PC performance and makes it sluggish.

How it will work

Google will pause the Flash content, like the Flash animation, of any webpage you visit that runs Flash. This refers primarily to content that isn’t central to the webpage. It will not affect central content like video and will let you play without any interruption.

Google claims this new feature will give you the advantage of surfing the Web for a longer period of time without worrying about power consumption.

It is not clear, however, if other Flash-based content can be blocked, such as cookies.

How you can operate it

This new feature will not block all Flash elements, but will pause the ads before they begin. If the content you find interesting has been paused, simply click it to continue playback.

Also, you can manually enable the feature. All you need to do is just hover to content settings and select “Detect and run important plugin content.” That’s it!

When it will be available

This new feature is now available by default on Chrome’s latest desktop Beta channel release and expected to be rolled out to all Chrome Desktop users soon.

According to Tommy Li, we will see more power improvement updates “in the coming months.”

Adobe Flash has always been a popular multimedia platform for the Web but in the last couple of years it has faced heat from several tech behemoths for being a drain on battery life and Google is a new addition to the list.

This move from the tech titan will definitely not make Adobe happy, especially considering Chrome holds 26.37 percent of the global browser market as of May, according to NetMarketShare.

It is evident that Adobe needs to give serious thought to its product development strategy to save its epic product Flash.

So what do you think about this new update? Do you think it will make Chrome perform better and put an end to the recent allegations made against the company? Please share your comments below.

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