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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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No speculation, I submitted this story also, with a quote from Google's Blog:
So it doesn't remain to be seen whether Google's acquisition of On2 has any bearing on their plans for video on the Web.
"Why are we going to acquire this company Google?"
"For the same reason we acquire every other company, to try and take over the world!"
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Chrome supports anything it can legally
Firefox supports anything it can legally
Safari supports anything it can legally
IE tries using only WMV for a little while, then opens up to other formats to slow the exodus.
I could see Google and Apple using their websites to push one codec or another, but I think they want their browsers to be as capable as possible.
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Actually the problem isn't "NOT Invented Here" it's "Invented Here - please pay us". So Theora doesn't have the quality, but H.264 is patented. Neither is suitable to all interests for those reasons. Those were the leading contenders, others suffer from the same issues. So now that Google owns a good codec, clearly they'll use it. The question is weather they'll let others use it and on what terms. IMHO they should allow anyone to use it for free. Adding yet another proprietary codec to the web would be detrimental, while the upside of codec licensing is probably small potatoes to Google. Freeing a good codec would mean easy access to Google video for everyone and not-as-easy access to MS and Apple.
Yeah, it's likely that they want the company's IP, too. Go back and look at the whole HTML 5 and Theora debate. Apparently Google is paying some kind of licensing fee for h264 for both YouTube and Chrome, probably for Android and ChromeOS too if they're providing support. Theora is an open source version of On2's codec that is both old and doesn't have any hardware support.
I don't think it's too much of a stretch to guess that Google wants to open up On2's most recent codecs and try to push other companies to support it. That way they could use the same video formats for all their products without paying additional licensing fees. Plus, they can move YouTube to using HTML5's "video" tag without having to keep a Theora copy to support Firefox/Linux and a h264 copy to support Safari/iPods/iPhones/AppleTVs. Think of what they'll save on transcoding and storage.
No, apple has stated they have no intention of supporting Ogg.
FTFA
Apple is the only vendor that will not be supporting Ogg.
MS is out of the debate because they will not be supporting <video> at all.