I think that’s a very important point. The default is h.264 because Flash supports it and that used to be the only way to get video to the people. Now there ar

I think that’s a very important point. The default is h.264 because Flash supports it and that used to be the only way to get video to the people. Now there are other ways, but they are not yet widespread enough, h.264 is consequently still necessary as a fallback. Outside of Flash browsers are not terribly bad at supporting h.264 either. WebM might be doing better – but not by much. That’s the problem. What someone who picks a video format is thinking: Many don’t have built-in support for video so we have to use Flash one way or another. h.264 is the format of choice when using Flash so we need our video in h.264. Oh, and look, that same h.264 video works in a ton of browsers without Flash. So we get kick-ass HTML5 video out of it, too, without doing any additional work. Also: iOS. WebM doesn’t even figure into this thinking and why should it? It would only complicate things for minimal gains. For WebM to claim decisive victory it would need widespread support (I’m guessing well north of two thirds) and h.264 would have to lag very far behind. It doesn’t look like that will be happening anytime soon. h.264 is the strong incumbent, it would take overwhelming force to take it out. (By the way, when does WebM come to Flash again? I don’t think it is already but I think they announced it. I’m not even sure whether that will change much about the dynamic, mostly due to inertia, but I might be wrong.)