Google will block Netscape plug-in API from January in Chrome

As of January, Google will block the Netscape plug-in API in Chrome by default. The internet giant has been phasing out the API for some time, but still uses a whitelist for popular plugins in the browser. The whitelist will also disappear from next year.

The whitelist applies by default to the most popular plug-ins, such as Silverlight, Unity and Google Earth. Users and system administrators can also add certain programs to the list themselves, so that they can still run them. However, Google will disable the whitelist by default from January, the company reports in a blog post.

The American company has been phasing out traditional plug-ins in its Chrome browser for some time. They still use Netscape’s plug-in API, also known as the npapi. According to Google, it is only insecure, unstable and too complex. For this reason, Google no longer allows plugins that use npapi in the Chrome Web Store.

Figures from Google show that the use of npapi plugins is steadily declining. The most used plugin so far is Silverlight, which eleven percent of all Chrome users use at some point. In second and third place are Google Talk and Java respectively. The latter must, however, be activated separately if a website wants to use Java.

More changes for npapi plugins are in the pipeline in Chrome, according to Google. From April next year, support will be disabled by default and plugins that use it will be removed from the Chrome Web Store. For advanced users and companies that are still dependent on the technology, that period will be a temporary solution to re-enable npapi. That solution will work until September, Google emphasizes.