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Google Acquiring VP3 Developer On2 Technologies
R.Mo_Robert writes "BetaNews is reporting that Google is acquiring On2, the video codec company and original developers of the VP3 codec from which Theora is derived. The article suggests that this may mean Google is backing Ogg Theora as the HTML5 video standard, but this is likely not the case--with Theora already being open-source and On2 having disclaimed all rights and patents, there is no reason Google should have needed to do this to push Theora. You may recall from some time back that HTML5 no longer specifies which video codec(s) a browser should support due to there being, unfortunately, no suitable codec at this time. But Google (known for supporting H.264) practically owns Web video with YouTube in most people's minds, so their influence could really swing the future of HTML5 video either way. It remains to be seen whether Google's acquisition of On2 has any bearing on their plans for video on the Web."
Theora was based on one of On2's earliest codecs. VP6 & VP7 have been far more successful and are even used as the Flash video codecs. If Google is acquiring On2, it could mean that they're looking to open up the formats that have defined Flash as the media player of choice.
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So can we speculate the reason for Google's action? Let's speculate. I'd like to see what is on minds of slashdotters.
So now Chrome can support only VP6/7 in die tag, Apple does it's quicktime thing, MS does .wmv and Firefox OGG. Hooray!
Honestly, i don't think that would happen, i hope that it may be open sourced and that Android will get some "high quality" video stuff (as far as you can get that on mobile displays).
But Google (known for supporting H.264) practically owns Web video with YouTube in most people's minds, so their influence could really swing the future of HTML5 video either way.
I'm not so sure. I doubt the vast majority of people who believe Internet Explorer to be the internet noticed that there was some kind of takeover. YouTube owns web video in most people's minds, yes, but it was difficult to tell anything happened even for those who did know what was going on. Even now, the bottom of the page says "© 2009 YouTube, LLC." Either way, I'm waiting for the day when YouTube uses the tag for displaying media and I can finally forget about FLV forever. Long time coming.
Google has a lot to gain by upgrading or replacing Ogg Theora in order to create a codec which is suitable as a web standard. The biggest item which could get in the way of Android taking off is proprietary video embedding using Flash and (especially) Silverlight.
I hope they pour huge resources into the development of such a standard, and release it as open source. This would not be out of character for Google, based on what they did with Chrome. It would be a benefit for end users, and a competitive gain for Google.
Google is starting to remind me of Cisco.
For years, Cisco innovated, created, well, MADE really cool things.
Now, they just buy them. I see Google heading that route.
(cue someone saying that Google still innovates, etc. Yeah, I know. So does Cisco. But all their major stuff in the past, oh, I dunno, 5 years at least, has been purchases of other companies making cool stuff.)
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That's a bit misleading. There are several suitable codecs. The problem is the major players involved with their "Not Invented Here" mentalities.
When I was researching creating my own video upload site I contacted On2 for information about licensing their flash video encoder. They claimed that "All major user submitted flash websites used their encoder", I assumed they were hinting at YouTube. Knowing this, an acquisition seems like a smart decision.
They're already buying the milk. Might as well just pay for the cow.
1. They're getting a good patent portfolio that they can use to defend their investment in YouTube with. They're fairly heavily invested in using ffmpeg which may have patent issues.
2. They're getting some very smart people and a user base that they can use to help steer the direction of video they way they want it to go.
3. VP7's being used for video chat by Skype and AIM - they might find it useful for their expanding telecommunications offerings.
VP8 was designed to deal with ARM chips and we know that Google Chrome OS will run on ARM chips. Why isn't this being connected in reports? Tech journalists are incompetent.
Actually they have vp6 and vp8 http://www.on2.com/index.php?564 which -- surprise, surprise -- on2 claims is better than h.264 -- if google decides to open up vp8 -- it would change the equation radically. Particularly the ogg/vp8 combo. It's also possible some vp3 diffs (theora) would still be useful when applied to vp8 -- although what the chances of this are, I couldn't say. It does solve the h.264 patent license problem for google with android and chrome os. A theora / vp8 release and a move to primacy of vp8 or derivative for youtube would reshape the whole playing field. I'm hopeful, but not gleeful yet.
The heavy referencing of Ogg, which has advanced more than it's roots in On2 is like calling Linux is based on Unix.
Article is too biased to Ogg. I would think google would develop their own standard, much like Android and OpenSocial. Ogg is history.
As a developer using FFmpeg, I run into problems with our clients trying to encode / decode VP6 and VP7. I'm hoping that Google will subsequently offer open source implementations of these. It will make my life a whole lot easier.
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YouTube still loses money hand over fist, where as Hulu is growing in revenue and popularity.
It is extremely easy to rip videos from YouTube, which might be a sticking point in YouTube getting more mainstream/commercial content. Frankly, I don't want to see adds for lame user-generated content on YouTube. And I do find most YouTube content lacking. But at the end of the day, if both YouTube and Hulu had say, full Simpsons episodes, I'd rather support Google's site rather than NBC's site.
These developers could perhaps tweak their existing code to develop a closed, DRM-laden codec that would allow YouTube to stream commercial content. And if YouTube doesn't make a move like this, it may just continue to hemorrhage money from here to eternity.
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But lot's of media oriented ARM platform already got h264 (and other) hardware accelerator...
It will be difficult to beat them with pure software.
Google can now use On2 codecs such as VP8 in YouTube, for free. No more royalties. But the royalties are not that expensive so this isn't likely a big deal for them. (Google could save more money by using smarter settings on their H.264 encoder.)
Do you think Google will seriously try to make money by selling codecs? I don't. $100 million is small change to Google, and if that's all it cost to buy On2, then the On2 revenue stream must be trivial by Google's standards.
So, Google won't save much money and won't make much money by buying On2. I think they are up to something else.
What I think is more interesting is the possibility that Google will give On2's latest technology to the Theora guys. Just as Sun started giving away OpenOffice.org after buying StarOffice, it's likely that Google will give away some or all of the On2 technology.
Despite being based on technology that is nearly a decade old, Theora is already fairly competitive for web video. (Theora is better than H.263, which has actually been used for years, so it's difficult to argue that Theora is not usable for web video.) Now imagine that Theora gets the best technology bits from a modern On2 codec, and integrates those, such that Theora really is as good as H.264, or even better.
Now imagine that this improved Theora is bundled with Google Chrome and Firefox, bundled with Android, and bundled with Google Chrome OS. Within a few years, Theora could become firmly established everywhere as a baseline standard that anyone can use.
Google likes things that make it easier for Google's customers to use Google's services. They like their customers not being locked into proprietary technologies not owned by Google. It will be impossible for Google to take the market away from H.264, but it is very possible that they could make sure their customers can always easily access their services.
Note that this scenario utterly depends on the new Theora being free software. Google could try to sell a proprietary On2 codec and gain a significant market share; well, if they try it, all I can say is "good luck with that." It's hard to push out an established standard; to do it, you need to be significantly better, not just a little bit better. Better technology, with Google behind it, completely free (and with no need to even keep track of how many codecs you ship out) might succeed.
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How is a company that makes video codecs worth $106.5 M? I for one am very confused.
And for God's sake please give me a Slashdot 1.0 theme! I can't take this JavaScript-laden hell.
Actually, many of those ARM Media-Oriented SoC's (Read: anything from TI, Qualcomm, NVidia, etc...) actually have media DSPs and they're doing the h.264 decode with the DSP core instead of dedicated hardware...
In any case where you see one of the new ARM Cortex-A8/A9 based media chips, you'll be able to implement h.264 or VP3-VP8 in the system with relative ease. Including the iPhone...
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106.5 million? Look how little that is compared to the amount of money they'd lose, licensing H.264!
VP8 should give similar results to H.264 as used on Youtube. (Lots of quality enhancing features turned off to speed up encoding)
I was hoping to see a Slashdot article on the latest Chrome beta, but that's probably a bit much. So can someone tell me what they think will show up in the new "Even More" section of the Chrome browser's New Tab screen?
In 3.0.195.4, the thumbnails have been rearranged (2 rows, 4 cols). Along the bottom is "Recent Activities", which includes closed windows/tabs and downloads. And next to that is "Even More". The content of that box is the simple text, "What will we put here?" My guess: targeted advertising, but I wonder if they've got something else up their sleeve?
(FWIW: the Incognito "new tab" is still nice 'n blank, except for the obvious warning against issues like "people standing behind you".)
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
such that Theora really is as good as H.264, or even better.
H.264 has a major advantage - implementation in silicon (hardware acceleration).
Google owning On2, and convincing vendors that YouTube on GoogleOS on Google Devices is going to need silicon, providing purchasing commitments, and having the team onboard that knows how to do things like re-write the codec for devices without FPU's can create the necessary momentum to bury the MPEGLA. Steve Jobs did us a short-term favor a few years back on h.264, but the non-free aspect of that is turning around to bite us now.
I'm working on a project that could really use hw-accelerated free codecs and the current tech is a patent minefield developers are afraid to step into. Send me a beta test unit, OK guys?
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As a developer, I can say that Google's product suite is unsettlingly dynamic. There's a new API every week or so, and no asssurance of futures. For example, I was all excited about using Google's JS extensions (with the ability to load/save data locally) but I've yet to see this working anywhere but Windows. Chrome is nice but Windows only, there's now (finally!) a Linux version, but it's so buggy that it often crashes X windows. And now they have their own O/S!? Two?! But which one should I use?
It's a mish-mash of poorly integrated pieces, and while they are doing some cool stuff, I need a bit more stability and completeness to do much with them. See, when I write software, the software becomes infrastructure for my clients. They use and depend on my software. I have hosting contracts for PHP apps I wrote 10 years ago, and the fact that the PHP guys have done so well at backwards compatibility means that I've transitioned from PHP 3 to 4 to 5 with so little porting that I didn't even charge the end users for the effort!
I can't spend weeks/months working on software with a platform that's 'cool' but won't be supported in a year or two!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
There was no codec that was suitable to all the needs of the major browser developers. Having to pay royalties was an impossibility for Mozilla and Opera, and thus made H.264 (or any of the official MPEG codecs) unsuitable for them. Apple's concern about submarine patents on Theora technology was legitimate, as was the lack of hardware implementation (although that would've been resolved in time). Furthermore, Google's concerns about quality were legitimate if the goal is to move things forward beyond the crap that YouTube currently serves, rather than being content to be almost as good as the worst H.264 implementation available (the Flash implementation). Dirac is in an even worse position, and it processing requirements would be very undesirable for handheld devices.
So all but one (Theora) were absolutely not suitable for implementation by the browsers, and even that one was questionable. I don't know if VP8 will be any better - it's technology seems to be much more similar to the modern MPEG codecs than Theora, which makes me think that On2 is probably cross-licensing patents which Google will not be able to open up, but I may be wrong.
Personally, I would have spent my money on at least Onlogn stuff.
No, I didn't read the summary, what of it?
If Google are smart, they will open up VP8 and create a new format with OGG container, VP8 video and Vorbis audio. And then use it for YouTube and in Chrome (I dont know how much it costs google to pay royalties on H.264 but it would definatly be more than VP8 would cost them)
Mozilla (FF/SM/etc) would support it if it was free (and if a good decoder was available under a license Mozilla can accept)
Opera would also likely support it if it was free
Microsoft wont be supporting anytime soon (because they want to push Silverlight instead)
And, by using VP8 for YouTube instead of H.264 (which means they dont have to pay any royalties to MPEG LA), Apple and others will be forced to support it.
Actually, Apple might well implement Theora, but they are worried about the patent issues. Amongst other things, that the patent agreement from On2 for VP3 might not be watertight. See this post by Apple employee on the Xiph mailing list - it really shows Apple's stance and worries on this issue.