Flash: a bloated, unstable, battery-slurping fountain of security problems to wrap video in. So why do so many big sites still require it? Jared Newman reports on the agonizingly slow decline of obsolete technology.
Most of the proprietors of Flash-reliant websites I contacted didn't want to talk at all. HBO, NBC, CBS, Zynga, King, Showtime, Pandora, and Spotify—all of which require Flash on their desktop sites—declined to comment. Major League Baseball, Slacker Radio, Hulu, and the BBC didn't respond to inquiries.
The larger the site, the more locked down they are by the challenge of technology transitions. This is another way of saying that Flash delivers what sites care about—cross-platform video views, delivered and counted reliably—so they don't want to change.
