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Just like the title says: it seems to me that microdata has a few advantages over microformats, with the only drawback being a bit more verbose. Is this all the story?

It seems that Google supports both equally; is there anything else which I should consider?

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possible duplicate of Microdata vs RFDa – John Conde♦ Sep 11 '10 at 21:10
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@John Conde - though related, this is not really a duplicate of Microdata vs RFDa, as RDFa is a more advanced/formal approach to semantic markup, see my answer for a bit more on this including links to elaborate explanations. – Steffen Opel Sep 15 '10 at 15:08

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Despite being (as of today) way too short for a subject like this, the Wikipedia article about Microdata (HTML5) still puts the relationship between the three common semantic markup approaches nicely:

Microdata can be viewed as an extension of the existing microformat idea which attempts to address the deficiencies of microformats without the complexity of systems such as RDFa.

So from a distance (i.e. ignoring technical differences) I'd say this pretty much is all the story indeed (for Microdata vs. Microformats - RDFa is another subject matter), consequently your main concern should be the target 'audience', i.e. whether your format of choice is supported by the clients you expect to consume your semantically enriched content - if Google is the usual benchmark here, it appears your are free to go with the upcoming HTML5 standard.

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Thanks for the answer. I chose to go with microdata: there's "official support" and I don't have to litter my markup with attributes. (RDFa has an incredible overhead, so I never really considered it) – Agos Sep 16 '10 at 11:12
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It is also good to keep in mind that Microformats are an open standard. This means anyone can contribute.

To be honest picking which one to use is totally dependent on your website needs. If there is a Microformate for what you need I suggest using it instead, at least for now. They are 5 years old and Microdata is still in the works.

Microformats also get to recommended faster then the the W3C does, or at least it feels that way.

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