Google may have just driven the final nail into the coffin of Adobe Flash with the news that new ads built using the software would no longer be accepted on its AdWords and DoubleClick advertising networks.

From 30 June, advertisers will no longer be able to upload Flash ads into AdWords, DoubleClick Campaign Manager or DoubleClick Bid Manager, and on 2 January 2017, any existing ads will cease to function on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange and Google Display Network.

The move is part of a larger effort on Googles part to encourage advertisers to build in HTML5, which can reach a larger audience and reduces both website loading times and battery consumption rates thanks to its more efficient design.

In September last year, Google updated its Chrome browser to automatically pause all Flash-based ads, replacing them with static banners that users would have to interact with to activate the rich media content. Google has provided advertisers with a number of tools to help them transition to designing in HTML5, including the capability to convert existing ads from Flash.

Adobe Flash was a cornerstone of the internet during its early years, enabling advertisers and publishers to create dynamic content that attracted attention on what was, at that point, a largely static and text-based internet.

By 2009, the software was installed on 99 per cent of internet-connected desktop computers, but its widespread nature meant it was a target for hackers looking for ways to exploit systems. In between 2008 and 2015, Adobe released 170 updates to Flash in an effort to fix security vulnerabilities, but with the massively successful iPhone and iPad famously abandoning Flash in favour of HTML5, the writing was already on the wall.

Having failed to make a successful transition to smartphones, as mobiles began to overtake desktop computers, websites that utilised Flash became increasingly redundant.

In 2015, Alex Stamos, Facebooks head of security, called for Flash to be retired, saying “it is time for Adobe to announce the end-of-life date for Flash and to ask the browsers to set killbits on the same day. Even if 18 months from now, one set date is the only way to disentangle the dependencies and upgrade the whole ecosystem at once.”