In a move that should surprise no one, Adobe today announced it will stop development of its Flash player for mobile devices. In his blog, vice president and general manager of interactive development Danny Winokur reiterated what the company told SD Times in September -- that the company is backing HTML5 for browsers and mobile devices, but will continue to build out Flash for advanced gaming and premium video. This would appear to mark the beginning of the end of browser plug-ins for rich Web applications as companies through money and effort behind the HTML5 standard. Microsoft faces a similar fate for its Silverlight technology; the company did not mention much about it at its BUILD conference in September but has voiced its support for HTML5 as well. Flash and Silverlight are further along than HTML5 right now (the spec is, after all, still in draft form, with W3C recommendation not expected until 2014), but as it gains momentum, the functionality will follow.