<story><title>YouTube now defaults to HTML5 video</title><url>http://youtube-eng.blogspot.com/2015/01/youtube-now-defaults-to-html5_27.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>shutupalready</author><text>What joy it is to finally uninstall Flash. The last time I was this happy to uninstall crappy software was when I realized that I no longer needed RealPlayer.&lt;p&gt;For those that don&amp;#x27;t know it, RealPlayer was a very popular proprietary media player (with its own proprietary formats) circa 2000. The company&amp;#x27;s stock was worth $380 a share in 2000; it&amp;#x27;s now worth $6.&lt;p&gt;The only explanation for RealPlayer&amp;#x27;s popularity was its DRM I think; lots of commercial users wanted the DRM.&lt;p&gt;But it got more bloated with every release, and I had to go through its countless option settings every time I updated it to disable all the sneaky ways they came up with to violate user privacy. I&amp;#x27;m relieved that we no longer need either Flash or RealPlayer.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>schoen</author><text>Unfortunately (though it&amp;#x27;s considerably more compartmentalized and constrained than prior iterations), Google is trying to replace Flash with a DRM mechanism that also requires proprietary software.  So while you might think that the advent of HTML5 video means you no longer need proprietary software to interoperate with the services that use it, Google and its partners are working to ensure that that&amp;#x27;s not true.</text></comment>
<story><title>YouTube now defaults to HTML5 video</title><url>http://youtube-eng.blogspot.com/2015/01/youtube-now-defaults-to-html5_27.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>shutupalready</author><text>What joy it is to finally uninstall Flash. The last time I was this happy to uninstall crappy software was when I realized that I no longer needed RealPlayer.&lt;p&gt;For those that don&amp;#x27;t know it, RealPlayer was a very popular proprietary media player (with its own proprietary formats) circa 2000. The company&amp;#x27;s stock was worth $380 a share in 2000; it&amp;#x27;s now worth $6.&lt;p&gt;The only explanation for RealPlayer&amp;#x27;s popularity was its DRM I think; lots of commercial users wanted the DRM.&lt;p&gt;But it got more bloated with every release, and I had to go through its countless option settings every time I updated it to disable all the sneaky ways they came up with to violate user privacy. I&amp;#x27;m relieved that we no longer need either Flash or RealPlayer.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>koyote</author><text>Oh my god I completely forgot about RealPlayer.&lt;p&gt;Luckily there was an alternative, Real Alternative, that enabled you to play the content without having to install that ghastly RealPlayer. It seems like the community always finds a way around crappy software.</text></comment>