But why do you care so much? Google did what they think is right for them and the web long-term. They're not in the business of making your job easy and certainly aren't in the business of extending ubiquity of what they feel is a harmful codec.

You don't have to agree. If you don't want to re-encode to WebM then don't. The users using browsers that don't support H.264 natively will get the Flash wrapper. If they don't like it they can use a different browser that does H.264 natively or go to a different content provider who will encode in WebM. Free market.

If WebM proves popular and wins the format war, we get a (FUD aside) license free codec. If it doesn't, at worst we get status quo of part-Flash, part-H.264 video experience, and at best we get your dream of H.264 ubiquity. Where's the loss?