Has Google TV Renewed Faith in Flash?
The New York Post is reporting that some bigger names in media have decided to stick with Adobe’s Flash for the time being, including Time Warner and NBC Universal. This occurs just when Steve Jobs, his epic Flash Bash (TM) agenda, and the iPad seemed to be convincing more and more media conglomerates to switch to HTML5. Well at least a few key players are saying “No thanks,” citing the expenses and workload that converting their backlog of content would create.
Aside from the costs, companies like NBC and Time Warner may see the endeavor as futile based on the recent surge in Flash support from Google. Aside from Flash 10.1 enabling a full Flash experience on Android 2.2 mobile devices, Adobe is throwing a lot of weight behind Google TV, which seems to be the first television/internet hybrid to actually get people excited (and for good reason).
The market for Flash content isn’t shrinking anytime soon thanks to products like Google TV, despite what Apple wants us to believe and the inherent drawbacks to Flash in general. We get it, Flash probably isn’t the most efficient way to handle certain content, but it is deeply built into the current internet architecture and as long as people have access to it and continue to use it, the big media companies won’t need to fear losing traffic to HTML5.
It is still a given that Flash will be phased out slowly but surely. Certain Time Warner brands such as CNN have already begun to make the switch. How long companies like NBC hold out on HTML5 is yet to be seen.
[via Gizmodo]