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>Other video services begrudgingly make the leap and start encoding their video in WebM format to support a growing number of users.

Or they just support those users instead by serving them Flash - which they have to do anyhow to support IE6/7/8 and Firefox 1/2/3, avoiding the hastle and cost of more video encoding and storage. And none of the rest then happens.

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That doesn't preclude the rest of the scenario from playing out. To the contrary, Flash and WebM support is a critical component. Google needs two things to apply pressure to Apple with WebM:

* Widespread WebM support in web browsers (Flash is a good vehicle for this)

* WebM exclusivity (or at least preference) on Android handsets

I'm not sure how they'd execute the latter. The handset manufacturers pick the chipsets and build the drivers, so it's not clear to me how that part plays out.

Like I said, it's a stretch, but given that Google seems to want to go head-to-head with Apple, it's plausible, IMO.

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