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The fact that Google owns the most popular flash site on the internet (YouTube), probably helped with their decision to include Flash.

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I assume the chromebooks support html5 video, which youtube also supports. Apple was able to have iPhones still work with youtube without supporting flash, so Google could have found a similar workaround even without including html5 video tags.

Though the iPhone uses a YouTube app, which isn't the web. The allure of the Chromebook is that it can play the whole web, and YouTube is a big part of that. YouTube does have html5 video, but it is still in beta and isn't available for all videos. And it is opt-in.

In addition, with the focus on enterprise and education, I believe that Chromebooks had to support flash as a requirement.

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