[dbrannan]

Take a good look at the number of plugins you are already running. If you are using Chrome type in about:plugins in the URL. I think you might be surprised.

I see many people have this hate towards Flash because it is a plug-in, but what about QuickTime, Silverlight, and Java? Plug-ins exist to extend the functionality of our browsers and let's face it, HTML does not do everything.

[ootachi]

In most cases, those plugins are there because some other app put them there, not because they're actually used. The most notable exception is probably Silverlight for Netflix.