what's wrong with xvid? i can't use h.264 with my aging pc. It's too jumpy and I'm lucky to get 3 fps with it but xvid has decent enough quality and runs just fine on my aging pc.

Youtube consistently stutters on my machine, no probs with any other HD sites, just on this basis I would say their implementation sucks so try something different!

"Forget on2 [...] I think it's [HTML5] reccomending ogg./theora. leverage that."

because On2 had nothing to do with Theora:

http://en.wikipedia.org
/wiki/Theora#Origin

It's "forget theora, you can do better" for Google now.

Seriously... The FSF does this statement right in the middle of Apple vs Adobe Flash problems. Common...who just received a check yesterday ? As for Google, they should know better. Every pieces of technologies have it's merit and drawback. Let the public decide...

Google owns DoubleClick; and the latter does lots of Rich Media ads.

"I think it's [HTML5] reccomending ogg./theora. leverage that."

Uh no. After heavy discussion there was a lack of consensus and thus the HTML5 specification requires no particular codec.

The state of play is:

H.264: Google Chrome, Apple Safari, IE+Chrome, IE+Flash, Firefox+Flash
Theora: Opera, Google Chrome, Mozilla, Firefox, Apple Safari+XiphQT, beta plugin for IE
Adobe Flash: H.264
Apple iPhone: H.264
Google Android: H.264
Google YouTube: H.264
Vimeo: H.264
BBC trial: Theora
Hulu: Flash, rumours of HTML5+H.264

In short, a giant FAIL by W3C. To support a reasonable set of out-of-the-box web browsers sites will need to encode video twice. So what is in it for sites to move to HTML5, considering that it doubles their disk usage over HTML3+Flash?

My browser can zoom text, and zoom images, It can't zoom Flash.

People with visual difficulties consider zoom to be a really big deal. So it's !@#$ irritating when major companies use Flash to implement, say, the menu of their home page. You can't complain if you can't see the "contact us" link!

The problem is that there is no practical way to leverage Theora: there are doubts about its quality and its full legality, and the main players want to push royalties-full MPEG4-H.264 for HTML5, which is a no-no for the Open Source crowd and small developers and companies.

So pushing an Open Source VP8 goes beyond killing Flash for video on the web: it must surpass H.264, too.

just use the html5 spec. I think it's reccomending ogg./theora. leverage that.

When the content is free to the end user and only the content creator has to pay for 'developer tools', then there is no real benefit to end users. As if there isn't enough garbage on the 'net, already!

And, who pays to upload/download YouTube anyways? YouTube is used as an example, and it's a bad one.

If the article is trying to say soemthing else, write a better article.