Some people think that Google is an open-source giant, that is naturally against proprietary software. It’s all but true. The whole google stack of software is proprietary, or proprietary adaptations of open-source software, and as a web-company, they need it to have an edge over challengers. Google push Flash on multiple ways since years, and they ensure you could not use some of their websites without having Flash Player (as a browser plug-in or integrated in Chrome). Google YouTube YouTube send only Flash video to PC/Mac browser, even if the browser don’t have the Flash player. They have H.264 version playable by FireFox, but they don’t send it, they just do it for Mobile platforms (iPhone, iPad, etc). The main point is to ensure you will install Flash Player, because everybody use YouTube at one point. Having H.264 playable content, YouTube may stream it when a browser is not Flash-enabled. Instead Google choose to ask you to install Flash. This is not a matter of content-delivery, it’s a matter of forcing users to install Flash! Google Analytics There’s many technologies to display simple graphs, notably using Ajax and HTML5. Instead, Google choose to use Flash exclusively, so if you choose