Google has recently launched a beta feature for users of YouTube to allow them to view videos on YouTube directly using  HTML5 without the need to have the Flash Player installed. The feature is still in beta and will not work with monetized videos or videos with annotation. It is also not supported by all browsers yet.

If YouTube was to rely primarily on HTML5 instead of Flash then this would be a major loss for Flash technology as YouTube is one of the most popular websites on the Internet and one which has helped promote the use of Flash as the optimum method for delivering video on the Internet.

The movement towards HTML5 instead of Flash for delivered video is motivated by the will to rely on open web standards instead of relying on a proprietary 3rd party technology such as Flash. It also makes more sense to implement a video directly, the same way an image is embedded, instead of relying on a plug-in to do the job.

However, playing a video is a more interactive experience that needs additional navigation tools and may not be placed and played the same way an image is showed. This of course can still be achieved by using AJAX instead of Flash, but it will take a lot of time before such technologies can replace Flash video because the support of HTML5 is still buggy across different browsers. The consistency that the Flash Player provides is also a big advantage that will be very hard to duplicate using HTML5 and AJAX.

You can read more about this on TechCrunch. You can also try out the new HTML5 playback feature on YouTube through its TestTube page.