[allyt]

They chose the path that would lead to the fastest adoption of the technology which lowers their bandwidth costs. Keeping the technology Chrome-only is against their financial interests.

Apple and MS pay yearly licensing fees for H.264. As soon as they adopt VP8, they can stop.

[ash]

Apple and Microsoft are among the H.264 licensors. I think they don't pay any licensing fees:

http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensors.aspx