Daring Fireball: The Practical vs. Idealistic Scenarios for the Near-Term Future of Online Video
OR: HOW GOOGLE’S DECISION TO DROP NATIVE H.264 PLAYBACK FROM CHROME SERVES TO PROP UP FLASH PLAYER
A good piece on Google’s decision to drop support for H.264 from John Gruber. I completely agree with many of his points, in particular, this one:
Let me be clear, though: there is nothing wrong with playing a video in Flash. I mean that seriously, no sarcasm. What there’s something wrong with is requiring Flash Player to play video. That’s the whole point of the HTML5 element: to enable web video without requiring the use of proprietary plugins.
Exactly. This is why Google’s decision is such a poor one. We should be moving away from Flash, not making it more necessary. You have to wonder whether there were any back room talks between Google and Adobe prior to this announcement…