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www.neowin.net/news/google-removes-h264-support-in-chromeIn an effort to promote fully open codecs, Google has decided to remove h.264 support from Chrome and focus on WebM and Theora. Is this a good thing? It depends on how you look at it. From a technical and visual standpoint, both codecs are inferior to h.264. However, they are definitely more open. So is it better to support the open source alternative? H.264 is already confirmed to remain royalty-free when distributed with free software. Therefore, while it's not as open as Theora and WebM, it is still freely available. Additionally, just about every device capable of playing video these days supports h.264. WebM/Theora, on the other hand... very few offer any support at all. In the future, it looks like Internet Explorer 9 and Safari will be the only two browsers to support the h.264 codec. Keep in mind that this does not affect Flash/Silverlight video, or anything streamed with a plugin for that matter. It's mainly for the HTML5 <video> tag, which offers native browser support for streaming video without the need for a plugin. So, is this a good thing? Even if h.264 is superior, is it better to chuck support for it because it's not open enough, even if it is guaranteed to remain free? Discuss.
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wat
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h.264 is not going to remain free. They've promised to remain free... for the time being. Basically, they're doing a bait and switch. When they finally have enough support that they are the de facto leader and no one can live without them, they'll start charging.
This is why Google is dropping support. And it is a very good thing, too. Now WebM will be the supported by every major browser except Safari, who will have to fall in line or be left behind (especially in the coming months when Google flips the switch on WebM on YouTube)
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Don't really have an opinion, but wanted to add that h.264 is supposed to be free till 2015, at which point they will start collecting royalties.
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k
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Don't really have an opinion, but wanted to add that h.264 is supposed to be free till 2015, at which point they will start collecting royalties. Exactly. Five years will be long enough for them to get themselves a monopoly on web video through the major browser's support and then they can start charging to license it and the browsers will either pay up or be left behind in web video. Honestly, I doubt the government would let it happen. It's monopolistic and has to violate anti-trust laws. Though, I'd rather see the major players take a stand against it now than see someone get their ass bit in five years over it. Only Apple and Microsoft support h.264 still. Microsoft has pledged support in a future update of IE9 for WebM and Apple will fight to the death for h.264, I'd imagine. Safari is only 5% of the web, though, so it's not that big of a deal at this point.
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Don't really have an opinion, but wanted to add that h.264 is supposed to be free till 2015, at which point they will start collecting royalties. Exactly. Five years will be long enough for them to get themselves a monopoly on web video through the major browser's support and then they can start charging to license it and the browsers will either pay up or be left behind in web video. Honestly, I doubt the government would let it happen. It's monopolistic and has to violate anti-trust laws. Though, I'd rather see the major players take a stand against it now than see someone get their ass bit in five years over it. Only Apple and Microsoft support h.264 still. Microsoft has pledged support in a future update of IE9 for WebM and Apple will fight to the death for h.264, I'd imagine. Safari is only 5% of the web, though, so it's not that big of a deal at this point. Mobile safari is a large % of the mobile space though
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Exactly. Five years will be long enough for them to get themselves a monopoly on web video through the major browser's support and then they can start charging to license it and the browsers will either pay up or be left behind in web video. Honestly, I doubt the government would let it happen. It's monopolistic and has to violate anti-trust laws. Though, I'd rather see the major players take a stand against it now than see someone get their ass bit in five years over it. Only Apple and Microsoft support h.264 still. Microsoft has pledged support in a future update of IE9 for WebM and Apple will fight to the death for h.264, I'd imagine. Safari is only 5% of the web, though, so it's not that big of a deal at this point. Mobile safari is a large % of the mobile space though Mobile browsing accounts for just 4% of all browsing. iOS accounts for roughly 20% of the mobile market. So less than 1% of total pages viewed is through mobile Safari. Like I said, not a huge deal at this point. gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-ww-monthly-200912-201012
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