For many in the industry who have wondered about Google's plans to develop a universal codec for the Web, the big news is that Google will support its WebM codec on the Chrome browser, the company announced today.

The company says it will not support H.264 – a widely used codec for online video.

Google Chrome will also support the Theora codec, the company announced.

Late last year we spoke with the W3C's domain leader Philippe Le Hagaret about the emergence of the WebM. Le Hagaret is in charge of HTML5 and related Web standards.

We are astonished that WebM has emerged so quickly.

Andy Plesser