Netflix on H.264
H.264 and the MPEG-LA patent pool are tools that Microsoft uses to prevent open platforms like Linux from legally having video players shipped with them. You have to add them, or you have to download them from outside the US and so in some instances break the law. This is just a replay of the .GIF submarine patent fiasco, and we all know how that worked out. Obviously it's in Microsoft's best interest if competing platforms can't do something critical like video as an integrated core feature.
Reed Hastings is the founder, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Netflix. He also sits on Microsoft's board of directors: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/bod/hastings/default.aspx Of course he's going to take Microsoft's side on this. Netflix is also going to disrespect Android from time to time, like they do here: http://blog.netflix.com/2010/11/netflix-on-android.html
About all browsers letting the OS handle video codecs like IE does: yeah, that's not going to work. Windows has a long tradition of not working at all for applications that Microsoft has decided to compete with - going all the way back to Windows 3.0 and Lotus 1-2-3. And of course who can forget the glorious decade-long antitrust suit for killing Netscape that got Microsoft to invest in a George Bush presidency to finally get some relief? Do I need to summon the ghost of WordPerfect here to be a witness? You don't let Microsoft's OS have any more of your application's functionality than you absolutely must if you want the app to live for very long.
So yeah, Google owns the WebM tech. They paid $106M for it. If they want to make it free and open that's their right. If they want to make browser plugins for all the other browsers, more power to 'em. And if they want to omit the H.264 support in their own browser and OS and so both make them more shareable and also save on some H.264 licensing costs, well, that's their right. They're not obliged to keep paying MPEG-LA licensing fees if they have their own video codec. They don't need H.264 - they already bought a codec, and it's quite good, and they've let us all use it any way we like. What evil controlling jerks they are to give us hundreds of millions of dollars worth of intellectual property for free! The hardware builders will come along with hardware acceleration in good time, if they haven't already. If somebody wants to pay the license and make an H.264 codec plugin for Chrome, it's not like the API for that isn't published with everything else in Chrome - with source code and examples even. You want it? Build it. Knock yourself out. Nothing is stopping you. No doubt somebody will before long.
I'm going to close this with one of my favorite quotes from RAH:
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back." - Robert A Heinlein, Life-Line, 1939.