Why do people keep stating it like an eternal truth that Flash can't support VP8. They've added video codecs at least three times in the past.
All those codecs have been bought in so it's not NIH syndrome. One of them was VP6! And if you think they're allergic to open source codecs then note they just adopted Xiph's Speex as a better alternative to NellyMoser for voice a year or so ago. I'm sure they appreciate not having to pay licence fees as much as the next giant corporation, and understand that customers appreciate that too.
(edit: just realised the post I'm replying to is actually saying something different i.e. that existing Flash video is often H.264 and so can be moved to HTML5 without touching the video file itself. I think the point is that Google doesn't want to move from Flash to HTML5, they want to move from royalty-bearing codecs to open source and open standard friendly codecs, so yes replacing those H.264 files is required regardless. Flash will become optional as a side-effect.)
All those codecs have been bought in so it's not NIH syndrome. One of them was VP6! And if you think they're allergic to open source codecs then note they just adopted Xiph's Speex as a better alternative to NellyMoser for voice a year or so ago. I'm sure they appreciate not having to pay licence fees as much as the next giant corporation, and understand that customers appreciate that too.
(edit: just realised the post I'm replying to is actually saying something different i.e. that existing Flash video is often H.264 and so can be moved to HTML5 without touching the video file itself. I think the point is that Google doesn't want to move from Flash to HTML5, they want to move from royalty-bearing codecs to open source and open standard friendly codecs, so yes replacing those H.264 files is required regardless. Flash will become optional as a side-effect.)