It was also a useful proof of concept of what could be done. Without Flash, would there have been the critical mass of users who wanted video in their browsers

It was also a useful proof of concept of what could be done. Without Flash, would there have been the critical mass of users who wanted video in their browsers at all? Or the content? I think that we would have gotten there eventually, but probably not as fast. The close - but not quite good enough - implementation of video in Flash was as much of a catalyst as it was a crutch to lean upon.