Next version of Microsoft Edge blocks Flash plugin by default, loads HTML5 content if available; Microsoft will exempt popular websites, hasn't said which ones
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge :
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the second half of a coordinated retreat from Flash that began earlier in 2016, when Microsoft said Edge would auto-pause Flash content not central to a page with a Windows 10 update. Google moved on the same schedule: Chrome first went click-to-play per its Q4 plan, then blocked behind-the-scenes Flash in September before Chrome 55 made HTML5 the desktop default days ago.
Edge now matches Chrome's structure almost exactly — block by default, fall back to HTML5, exempt a short list of popular sites — except Microsoft hasn't named its exemptions, where Chrome disclosed a top-10 list. The move extends a pattern Microsoft set when it confirmed Edge would drop Silverlight entirely.
First-order effects
- Sites still serving Flash-only content lose default playback in Edge unless they migrate to HTML5 or make Microsoft's unnamed exemption list, while Edge users get HTML5 versions of pages automatically.
- Publishers who relied on Edge's looser Flash handling after Chrome 55 now face both major engines blocking the plugin within the same week.
Second-order effects
- Exemption lists become negotiating leverage: Chrome's top-10 carve-out showed the model, and Microsoft's undisclosed list gives popular sites a private channel to request opt-outs rather than rewrite content.
- With Chrome and Edge enforcing identical defaults, Adobe's plugin loses its last mainstream distribution path, forcing laggard sites to fund HTML5 rewrites on the browsers' timeline rather than their own.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, browser vendors — not standards bodies alone — become the effective gatekeepers of which web technologies survive, retiring plugins like Flash and Silverlight by shipping default behavior rather than formal deprecation.
- The web consolidates around HTML5 as the single rendering target, raising the cost of any future proprietary content format that lacks both Chrome's and Edge's blessing.
The trend: Browser vendors are coordinating the retirement of proprietary plugins by flipping HTML5 defaults in lockstep, with exemption lists replacing formal standards processes as the mechanism of control.