Google Swiffy was created in 2011 by Google’s engineer, Pieter Senster, and his team. It was a browser tool that converted Adobe Flash SWF files into HTML5 ones.
Swiffy was used to display Flash imagery on devices, such as Android Tablets and iOS phones and tablets, which didn’t support Flash.
In June 2018, Google announced they were discontinuing the tool on July 1. On their blog, they shared:
As part of our transition of display ads to HTML5, the Swiffy Flash conversion tool is no longer available. We will continue to serve the Swiffy runtimes, so any files you have already converted will continue to play.
The decision didn’t come as much of a surprise since the company had spent the previous year converting their ads into HTML5 format while slowly restricting what formats customers could upload on the Google Display Network and Adwords, and the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform.
Furthermore, tech giants such as Apple and Microsoft, dealing with browser-creation, also advised for limited usage of Flash. The reason was that HTML5 standards were more secure, the performance was better, and they provided better advantages for developers. That also led to Adobe canceling support for Flash on December 31, 2020.
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