Not a shock but still..  Google have pulled direct support for the h.264 (AVC) video codec that Apple has been pushing and Microsoft has go along with. This was Apples answer to Flash video.  However, the h.264 codec is not free, a fee has to be paid to the MPEG LA.  The WebM codec now to be championed by Google is royalty free and open source.

To that end, we are changing Chrome’s HTML5 support to make it consistent with the codecs already supported by the open Chromium project. Specifically, we are supporting the WebM (VP8) and Theora video codecs, and will consider adding support for other high-quality open codecs in the future. 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. -from Google.

One big change coming with the new HTML5 version of the Web page description language is built-in support for video; most Web video today employs Adobe Systems’ Flash Player plug-in, which uses H.264 and other codecs under the covers. Although HTML5 video has promise, disagreements in the W3C standards group have meant the draft standard omits specifying a particular codec.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20028196-264.html#ixzz1Algbqbpk