[fczuardi]

There is a strategy in the middle however for google/youtube to make people want to migrate to browsers and devices that supports webm/vp8: all they have to do is to continue serving both webm and h264 versions, but make the h264 version a worst experience.

For example: make all h264 encoded clips on youtube become grayscale while mantainig the vp8 ones high quality and in color. People would not be prevented from watching youtube on iDevices, but watching it on those devices would be like watching an old black and white tv :)

And when people start flooding apple feedback and support channels with "why my youtube lost its colors on my ipad?" questions, then maybe Apple can add vp8 support on iOS.

[rimantas]

Don't forget that more and more video content will be available on iPad from ITMS. And I assure you, it won't be grayscale, and it won't eat as much battery as WebM without hardware support.

[fczuardi]

Yep, Apple could be the provider of the devices that can play everything! Both the paid, hardware accelerated, hollywood/DRM-ed stuff from ITMS and the free amateur/amazing content of youtube(hopefully harware accelerated eventually too).

Apple supporting both vp8 and h264 would continue to be the company with the best mobile devices, but if they don't embrace the open unemcumbered format that firefox, opera, chrome and youtube uses they will be giving an either/or kind of choice for mobile consumers, they would be making them choose between hollywood and youtube, stating that their costumers cant have both.