Is the removal of H.264 from Chrome a step backward for openness?

Haavard:

So the question of Google’s bundling of Flash is a red herring which takes away the focus from the real issue: Whether native video support in browsers is based on open or closed technologies.

The problem is that it isn’t a red herring. It’s just another, actually larger, issue which he’s sidestepping. 

As Google themselves wrote two days ago (bolding mine):

Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies.

How can that be your stated goal and you still bundle Flash? If you really want to enable “open innovations”, remove H.264 AND Flash from the browser.

Why is “open” allowed to be selectively applied to certain things and not others? Isn’t that what Google always gives Apple shit for?

It’s totally hypocritical. But the truth, as we all know, is that the “open” argument here is actually the red herring. Reading this, I’m not sure the people at Opera actually understand that, though.

Also, I loved this throwaway line:

Although browser market share is impossible to measure reliably, most of the data seems to confirm that.

Spoken like a true employee of a browser with 2 percent worldwide share.

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