It's ironic Steve Jobs has argued so passionately that HTML5 is the future of the mobile internet during his battles with Adobe over Flash 10.1.

Google has just demonstrated how rich-media HTML 5 websites will be able to circumvent the App Store and reduce Apple's power.

Missing link

You can see the process with Google's new HTML5-enabled mobile YouTube site.

Not only is this much faster and better than the old native Apple-created YouTube app, but if you go to the site, it asks you if you want to download - actually it says install - the web app to your home screen.

The result is a neat YouTube icon that sits alongside all the other icons from the apps you got from the App Store. But, of course, it's not an app, it's a web shortcut.

And as more developers create mobile websites using HTML5, this direct distribution method will become much more popular. We've already seen HTML5 game demos for example, so there's no reason why fully featured web games won't be distributed this way.

Flash by another name

For one thing, this will get around Apple's sometimes tricky and often annoying app approval process. For another, it will allow a direct channel between content creator and user.

Of course, how to monetise this sort of activity outside of the App Store will be an issue, but just some of the most popular websites now are collections of free-to-play Flash games, some of the most popular mobile websites of the future will be collections of free-to-play HTML5 games.

And iPhone and iPod touches with home screens bearing Kongregate or Miniclip icons aren't likely to be iPhone and iPod touches that download a lot of App Store games; and certainly not paid games.