Adobe Flash Player (labeled Shockwave Flash in Internet Explorer and Firefox)^[4] is freeware software for viewingmultimedia, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming video and audio, content created on the Adobe Flash platform. Flash Player can run from a web browser as a browser plug-in or on supported mobile devices.

Flash Player has a wide user base, with over 90%^{[citation needed]} penetration on internet connected personal computers, and is a common format for games, animations, and GUIs embedded into web pages. Adobe Systems, the developer of Adobe Flash Player, states that more than 400 million of total more than 1 billion connected desktops update to the new version of Flash Player within six weeks of release.^[5]

Flash Player can be downloaded for free and its plug-in version is available for recent versions of web browsers (such asInternet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari) on selected platforms. Google Chrome distribution comes bundled with the sandboxed Adobe Flash plug-in and will continue to support the plug-in in Windows 8 Metromode.^[6][7][8] Each version of Adobe Flash Player is backwards-compatible.^{[citation needed]}