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Comment by jncraton | Hacker News Reader

I don't think this is going to kill flash, or at least not for a while. The speculation that Google is going to switch YouTube over to HTML5 any time soon is quite far fetched. They would be alienating a large part of their user base.

What this does provide is the possibility to have a universally supported HTML5 video codec. At the moment, there isn't a single one that is going to be supported by all browsers. Without a well supported codec, HTML5 video tags are basically useless in production. This new deal doesn't automatically kill flash, but it does somewhat level the playing field between flash and HTML5 in terms of video.

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Youtube already has specialist interfaces for smartphones, iPhones, Big screen TVs, and 6 or 7 different Flash versions based on quality/bitrate, size and codec. They can easily add another using HTML5, particularly if it provides a better experience for those using Google's Chrome browser or OS.

YouTube native on the iPhone was already a major blow to Flash (as was the whole touchscreen phone/computer paradigm). This will kill it (in conjunction with a bunch of other stuff Google is pushing under the umbrella of HTML5).

Video in Flash has always been an aberration created by dodgy patents, licensing considerations and competitive posturing of big companies, now the market can correct itself and Flash (for video and otherwise) is going to have to compete on its own merits. In brief: dead man walking.

I really hope you're right. I would love nothing more than to see flash go the way of .rm

One of On2's codecs, VP6, is already supported out of the box by Flash, potentially allowing them to provide the same video encoding to both HTML5 and Flash visitors.

Well, considering bandwidth is more important to google than storage, they could take the more obvious approach and just choose the appropriate method and codec for a person's web browser.

Google is losing the Youtube money on streaming bandwidth. 1+1=2

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