H.264

As the online search giant Google has completed its acquisition of video compression outfit On2 Technologies the company was recommended by the Free Software Foundation to release On2's latest codec under an irrevocable free license and use it to replace Adobe Flash on YouTube.

"With your purchase of On2, you now own both the world's largest video site (YouTube) and all the patents behind a new high performance video codec: VP8," reads a open letter to Google, posted to the Free Software Foundation (FSF) blogs.