Starting in September, Chrome will stop auto-playing Flash ads

Google has announcedthat, beginning September 1, Chrome will no longer auto-playFlash-based ads in the company's popular AdWords program. The postframes this as a move to improve browsing performance for users, andnotes that most Flash ads are automatically converted to HTML5already. Commenting on the news, The Register notesthat the change should also offer some additional protection againstmalware delivered via Flash. Chrome will continue to auto-play Flashcontent in the main body of pages, however. The Register's story saysthe change is, in fact, just a modification of the default setting forplugin behavior, which already supportsan option to disable plugin content not deemed "important." Mozilla,of course, blacklisted the Flashplugin in July, although that action only disabled the then-current,vulnerable release-which was subsequently updated.