All of the articles, particularly this one, seem to be missing the point. They attribute Google's actions to abstract ideas of openness or competition between

All of the articles, particularly this one, seem to be missing the point. They attribute Google's actions to abstract ideas of openness or competition between codecs. But there is a concrete issue involved: under MPEG-LA's licensing terms, Google should be paying $6.5 million a year to distribute a H.264 decoder. Under that license, the end users only get the rights to use the software "for personal and consumer purposes": they couldn't fork Chrome, redistribute it, etc. The Ars article mentions this, but immediately moves on. It's possible Google expects MPEG-LA to try to enforce the patents, and that's why they're dropping H.264 support. After all, Google is the only browser vendor not in MPEG-LA worth trying to get money from. The yearly licensing amount just went up by $1.5 million, which might have influenced the timing of the announcement. Comparisons with Flash are irrelevant: it may be less open than H.264, but not in the way that matters to Google.