In a move to encourage support for royalty-free codecs on the Web, Google announced this morning that it will remove the patent-encumbered H.264 codec from future versions of its Chrome Web browser.

Google said that Tthe move would help accelerate adoption of Google's own WebM format, but it will also compound the technical challenges faced by content producers who want to use standards-based video to reach a broad audience on the Web.

"We expect even more rapid innovation in the web media platform in the coming year and are focusing our investments in those technologies that are developed and licensed based on open web principles. To that end, we are changing Chrome?s HTML5