Opinion on Web M

[Sharptooh]

Has anybody here heard about Google pulling h.264 support from Chrome? If so what do they think of it?

It's pretty hard to explain if you don't know much about the long story behind it, looking here might help:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/14/google-h264-flash/

Personally I think it's ridiculous, Google are being seriously two faced here, they're making it look like they're doing this for the good of the web when really it might end up in Google having more power than they already have over the web, which at the moment I think is too much

It's also stupid they advocate open video whilst having Adobe Flash baked into Chrome ¬_¬

[windhound]

Aha.  Missed this.

Didja know that Firefox, Opera and all other free browsers lack support for h.264?
h.264 is not a free codec, infact its extremely tangled in a web of patents held by some of the industry's biggest - Microsoft, Sony, Apple, etc.

h.264 is locked down. 
WebM is open and afaik skirts around the minefield that is software patents.

There's a good discussion on Slashdot - http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/01/11/2230223/Google-To-Drop-Support-For-H264-In-Chrome?from=rss
Overall the consensus is that its a positive move. 

On the patent and licensing issues - http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1946532&cid=34843744

As far as Flash,

The reason Chrome has Flash integrated is because a significant number of security exploits today are of Adobe products, specifically Flash Player and Adobe Reader. By integrating Flash, Google has managed to integrate it with their silent update system and the Chrome sandbox (sandboxed Flash is in the beta channel [computerworld.com]). As for PDF viewing, Google wrote their own simple, sandboxed PDF viewer with none of Adobe's issues and shipped it in Chrome 8 [makeuseof.com].
Honestly, this is a lot better than users getting both of these manually and having vulnerable versions lying around.

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1946532&cid=34843064

Also, people are making websites entirely out of flash and many others use it for various things.  Flash is not just for video and is mandatory for any real browser (though many mobile browsers lack it).  Google did the next best thing and forces their users to keep it up to date.  I've noticed that Firefox will yell at you to update your Flash if you get too behind.

I know you love to hate on Google, but this really isn't a bad thing. 
A mega company saying 'no' to a patent encumbered video format is a win for the internet as a whole.