death of flashAdobe Flash Player's death knell has tolled for four long years. In 2017, Adobe announced its End of Life (EOL) plans to terminate the multimedia software after 2020. January 12, 2021, has come and gone, taking Flash with it. However, its ghost still lingers and can cause problems if not uninstalled immediately.

The Flash Player has become notorious for its easily hackable architecture that has allowed ne'er-do-wells to inject malware into Flash user's computers. It has been so infamous that Apple's late co-founder, Steve Jobs, drafted a letter in 2010 criticizing its poor performance, the massive power draw on devices, and inadequate security. With Adobe stopping support, it is only that more likely for hackers to exploit the media player. Adobe urges that users uninstall the software immediately to evade such attempts.

Luckily, this long-anticipated end has been planned for and will likely not heavily impact web browser usage as sites switched to new, more reliable software or even create their own "flash players," as New Grounds did. Newgrounds, a web-based video game and video animation site, has built all of its content almost entirely on Flash Player for the past 20 years. Anticipating the EOL of Flash spurred them to create their own "Newgrounds Player" to continue to support their over 80,000 games and 150,000 animations.