This seems to me to be overkill just to keep a codec up to date. This updater is supposed to keep the WebM support up to date and report crash info, but the downside is it installs an additional Windows service and 2 tasks that run periodically and every time you reboot your computer. If you use the manual installer (that you have to download) it does not install the GoogleUpdate.

One other thing, if you add WebM support to IE 9 with the automatic online installer you also get the GoogleUpdate installed. The only problem with that is the mouse cursor stays visible. To get full screen you need to also toggle the browser to full screen mode. It causes the video to expand within the browser’s window, not full screen. I noticed that the full screen toggle for the WebM player does not work as expected in FF 4 and IE 9. You can use the YouTube WebM videos for testing FF 4 and IE 9.

The WebM test link given is for the Chrome browser. Your browser supports the standard if the videos play, if you get errors, the standard is not supported. Visit the following links with your browser of choice. Here is how you can test if your web browser supports WebM or H.264. To paraphrase: Flash based players are the most common to play H.264 contents, and Flash may be used as a fallback if the browser does not support the format or WebM. Regardless of that, it is still true that Flash is used as a fallback if the web browser does not support the HTML5 video format that is embedded on a page. H.264 encoded videos need to be loaded into a player, like Flash on the web or a desktop video player. That's however not possible considering that H.264 is a video codec and Flash Player a multimedia runtime. Many users believe that it might replace Flash on the Internet.

The clear winner for now is Adobe with its Flash technology, as it is being used as a fallback on many sites. Problems will arise for Internet users once the acceptance and use of HTML5 video rises on the Internet. Depending on your browser choice, you end up either with one or the other, but not both. When you look at HTML5 video support of the five most popular web browsers, you notice that there is not a single browser supporting the two formats WebM and H.264.

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