YouTube defaults to HTML5 on the web

If you've been hoping for YouTube to drop the notoriously buggy Flash video format as its default player, well, good news. Nearly five years after the streaming giant started supporting the HTML5 standard for its videos, it's finally now its player of choice. That means from now on, YouTube will use the HTML5 <video> format by default in most modern
browsers -- that includes Chrome, IE 11, Safari 8 and beta versions of Firefox. Why the wait? Well, YouTube says in a blog post that it was waiting for HTML5 to mature and improve -- it was still fairly experimental back then. Now, however, the standard is widely adopted and has plenty going for it, like the support for live broadcasts and a more immersive fullscreen view. Seeing as HTML5 is not just in browsers but smart TVs and other streaming boxes too, this news has been a long time coming. Which makes us wonder how long Flash has left before it's gone altogether.