Unfortunately, open video formats have been subjected to FUD so frequently that people are willing to believe bold claims like these without demanding substantiation.
In this comparison I will demonstrate that this claim was unfair and unreasonable. Using a simple test case I show that Theora is competitive and even superior to some of the files that Google is distributing today on YouTube.

«...That statement packages several questionable assumptions:

1. That the only motive for developing free software is ideological.

2. That innovation in software requires a lot of funding.

3. That the only way to fund software research is through proprietary software.

4. That innovation is more important than freedom.

Thanks to KDE 4 Plasma magic the video is nicely integrated into the context view of the user interface of Amarok 2. This feature is especially handy for watching YouTube videos, and they're working on integrating it directly with their SeeqPod service, allowing to find and play videos from the net in the blink of an eye.

GNOME’s Totem Movie Player now includes a plugin for searching and playing YouTube videos without leaving the player, and without Flash. It’s installed by default in Ubuntu 8.04, and works fabulously!

Support for YouTube and Lulu.tv streaming video is a key feature of Gnash 0.8.0, the third alpha release of the open source Flash movie player. Gnash is available as a standalone application, or as a plugin for Firefox, Mozilla, Konqueror, and Opera.