Flash updates and firefox

New Firefox versions will warn you when your Flash plugin is out of date.This is a cool idea and will help users that are not aware of the need to update software like Flash and Acrobat Reader. I can also see this as the beginning of a trend to centralize the updating of all the crap we run on the client side. Microsoft (and Mozilla, Apple, Google) already have a very good update system for their software. By opening it to other software vendors via a public API, it could be used as a single source of updates. Adobe, instead of deploying its own update system, could simply publish its updates through Windows update system. To avoid non-authorized updates, the user could be asked for the first time if he wants to allow that organization to update its software through the system, with the identity being verified through digital certificates. That would certainly help users to keep their software updates and to reduce the number of agents checking every time if there are updates to be installed. Please guys, let's simplify this mess.