@hoaxoner - I agree with Jason ... in part. I agree that rationalizing the formats of the encoded video content to fewer formats may save Google considerable storage and infrastructure, but that'd have been the same had they decided to standardize around H.264.
The thing that caught my eye this morning was their statement about H.264 being free for free content (at least for now).
Perhaps Google is planning on turning YouTube into a partially/fully commercial service to help fund the growing costs of their infrastructure, storage and services. Or perhaps they're looking at purchasing other commercial video content storage/encoding/distribution companies ... Hulu for example.
Either way, if they start charging for uploading and/or downloading video content they'll suddenly be liable for considerable fees if they encode to H.264.
Chosing VP8/Theora will (potentially) save them from these costs.
Potentially, because VP8/Theora are not immune to patent suits.
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