Even though Google is a strong backer of the open HTML5 and CSS3 standard, which can replicate a lot of Flash features, the company is also acutely aware that a lot of users and web developers still rely on Flash. When we talked to Bran Rakowski, Google's product manager and director for Chrome, last month, he noted that Google thinks that by coupling Flash to the browser, Google can ensure that users will run a very recent and secure version of Flash.

Google's update mechanism ensures that the browser stays up to date, without any intervention from the user. In addition to this, Google can also test the specific version of Flash it distributes with the browser and ensure that it is stable. With its new crash protection feature in Firefox, Mozilla is also working hard to ensure that crashing Flash content can't take the whole browser down and Apple and Opera offer a similar feature in their browsers.

As CNET's Stephen Shankland rightly notes, Adobe is also working hard to keep Flash relevant and with the latest version of the Flash Player (10.1), Adobe is also trying to gain a foothold on mobile devices. Google's own Android operating system is one of the first to support mobile Flash.