Google Clarifies Their H.264 Stance, Hands Keys Of Web Video’s Future Back To Flash

Earlier this week, Google wrote a very short post on their relatively small Chromium blog to announce a big change: they were dropping support for the H.264 codec in Chrome. While they may have tried to whisper it, the post resulted in a shitstorm that reached high into the heavens. It seems as if just about everyone weighed in on the decision ( including us, twice ). As a result of the fallout, Google decided to follow-up on their three-paragraph post today with a ten-paragraph one more clearly outlining why they're making the move. It certainly is more clear, and that's perhaps what makes it even more frustrating. As Google notes, this is all about the HTML <video> tag. The search giant cites an impasse in figuring out one codec to use for the future of HTML5-based web video. Safari and IE are backing H.264, but Mozilla and Opera refuse to, and had been backing Ogg Theora. So Google dreamed up WebM and got Mozilla and Opera to sign on board. Unfortunately, we're still at an impasse, because it does not appear that Safari and IE will be doing the same any time soon.