Apple may have forsaken Adobe's Flash technology, but Google is fully embracing the multimedia development tools in an upcoming release of its Android operating system.
Android 2.2, expected to be available in May, will include full native Flash support, according to a New York Times interview with Andy Rubin, Google vice president for engineering.
Google's support for Flash is in contrast to Apple's efforts to keep Flash-based applications off its iPhone and iPad devices. Last week Adobe said it was abandoning its efforts to develop Flash development tools for Apple's iPhone operating system, ending a long-running dispute between the two companies.
Adobe said it would not add to iPhone OS development capabilities for Flash beyond the current version of its Creative Suite software. Adobe blamed Apple's restrictive licensing terms for the company's decision. Apple has said it considers Flash to be too much of a security risk for the iPhone and iPad.
In the interview Rubin promised full, native support for Android 2.2, code-named Froyo (for frozen yogurt). The story quoted the executive as saying that sometimes being open "means not being militant about the things consumers are actually enjoying."
Flash support in Android means that multimedia applications written using the Adobe technology will be able to run on mobile devices that use the Android OS.
