When you hear something is turning 5, most people immediately think of buying Barbie dolls or action figures. However, when something like YouTube turns five, it brings a whole slew of new changes to the table.
In a wonderfully smart, albeit sneaky, way to get more users to start using Chrome, Google, who is the owner of YouTube after a 1.65 billion dollar purchase, has begun testing for HTML5 video format. IE browsers do not support this format, making sure that if YouTube stops using Flash, you would theoretically have to switch to Chrome to watch those adorable kitten videos. Some notable changes that Google has already made to YouTube include the wonderful embedded ads on top of every single video that you watch. As an avid YouTube user, the track record makes me wonder, "Do they really want me to have a good video experience? Or are they just trying to make more money Gordon Gekko style?" In my opinion, its most likely the latter.
In the short history of YouTube, it has almost crashed the internet. Twice. Proving too much for unprepared hosts, the sheer amount of data that YouTube sends is unreal. YouTube is comparable in volume of hits only to the Google search engine, Facebook, and Wikipedia. All of which only give you still images or texts. Not streaming video.
YouTube is essentially walking a slippery slope. They are putting much faith in the fact that most internet users love kitten videos so much that until Microsoft or Mozilla create patches to support HTML5 video, the users will switch to Chrome, have an epiphany, and only use Chrome for the rest of their kitten video watching lives.
I think it will be hard to do away with Flash completely. I know a lot of developers are singing praises when they hear Flash may be on the way out. I however, still think it will be around for many more years as it is still the best tool for creating motion graphics (non-video).
I was amazed to hear the new iPAD will not be supporing Flash. I think Adobe will work with Apple on changing this though. There is just too much current content on the web to simply drop support overnight!