Someone has to talk to Google about their terrible naming practices. Between VP8 & V8, Go and Closure, I'm amazed any of us can remember what Google product is what.
Personally, i think their "pairs" ( gin and guice, nacl and pepper) are both effective and cute. As for the ones you mentioned, v8 is a faster JavaScript engine , which makes sense (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V8_engine ). Go is a language that is easy to get started with. Vp8, they inherited when they bought on2. I haven't used closure, and don't know much about it, but I'm guessing to those familiar with it, it makes sense.
At very least, their names are much more intuitive than, for example, apache software names
How long until Google releases a real specification? (the current one is quite bad, it would be frightening to design silicon from blocks of uncommented C code lifted from the on2 implementation and foisted off as a specification. How long until someone writes an encoder that is incompatible with your silicon? Will it matter if it is your fault or theirs?)
How long until there are hardware VP8 decoders? (to save your battery)
How long until the patent holders decide to sue? (VP8 is extremely similar to H.264. They left out the most obvious IP in the algorithms, to their detriment, but only the patent owners know if they will sue. Though, I wonder if licensing the MPEG-LA properties covers VP8 decoders as well. If so, then Apple won't care, they already license.)
A long time. No one is going to stop serving up h264 if they already do; at best, this will only slow new adoptions. However, maybe I'm wrong; it would be interesting to see Youtube, et al do something to push on Apple... perhaps using h264 only for low resolutions or something. I don't think that anyone can afford to just cut off iPhone and iPad traffic by going flash-or-vp8 only.
Anyone know if, and if so when, the various track videos will be released? I'm kinda interested in the android track and the PubsubHubbub talk and would be interesting to see what can be learned from them.
http://www.webmproject.org