Five Years of YouTube and Forced Evolution

NakNak writes to mention that the DailyMaverick has a feature looking back at five years of YouTube, some of the massive changes that have been forced through as a result of its overwhelming popularity, and what changes might be necessary going forward. "Google, which bought YouTube less than two years after it was founded for what was then considered outrageously expensive $1.65 billion, does not want Microsoft or Apple (or anybody else) to own the dominant video format. So it has become the biggest early tester of HTML5. Your browser doesn't support HTML5? Google launches its own browser, Chrome. Need to use Internet Explorer at work because that's all your IT department supports? Google launches a Chrome framework that effectively subverts IE and makes it HTML5-compatible. The final blow will be the day that YouTube switches off Flash and starts streaming only to HTML5 browsers. On that day all browsers will be HTML5 compatible or they will perish in the flames of user outrage."

Comments

Perish

[Lije Baley]

Yes, perish for lack of Flash, just like the Iphone is now.

Re:Perish

[lwsimon]

Name a popular flash-only site than a majority of iPhone users visit on a regular basis on their desktop or laptop.

YouTube works on iPhone, and Safari for iPhone supports HTML5. From an industry perspective, iPhone's lack of Flash is a *good* thing. From a personal standpoint, as an iPhone user, its a small negative - something that would be nice, but to be honest, I don't really miss.

Re:Perish

[pantherace]

As it is, you can view youtube on the iphone. If you couldn't, I suspect that the iphone would have gotten a lot of rage. (Don't know about other video sites)

I suspect that the vast majority of what people do with flash (intentionally, I'm not counting ads) is view video. Oh sure, there are stupid little flash games, but things like that existed before, they were Java though. True, some websites are flash only, but frankly those sites should probably die. (At least that's everyone's hope.) Indeed, trading the lack of flash games, for basically not having to deal with any of the flash ads, is essentially an ad-blocker.

Re:Perish

[thePsychologist]

Except that you can watch YouTube on the iPhone.

Re:Perish

[cupantae]

Perish for a lack of HTML5 support, my friend. Try again, maybe?

Besides, the iPhone is a special case. If there are several roughly equivalent browsers for the SAME platform, then of course the ones with hugely reduced functionality will die off.

Re:Perish

[gad_zuki!]

>Name a popular flash-only site than a majority of iPhone users visit on a regular basis on their desktop or laptop.

Newgrounds. Vimeo. Viddler. and the dozens of flash gaming sites.

>as an iPhone user, its a small negative

Only because youve drunk so much of the koolaid and so used to be roughed up by corporations that you have no idea what its like to have a phone platform that does more.

Re:Perish

[Abalamahalamatandra]

I'm not an Apple fanboi, but I will say: the problem is not that the iPhone doesn't support Flash, the problem is that Flash, as a proprietary overlay to the open Web, even exists.

I spend most of my time on my desktop using NoScript to actively BLOCK Flash, and grudgingly allow it to run when I have no other alternative to get the information I need. Flash support on a mobile phone without the means to easily block it via a permissions structure is an absolute battery and usability nightmare waiting to happen.

Re:Perish

[PopeRatzo]

From an industry perspective, iPhone's lack of Flash is a *good* thing.

Yes, but "industry perspective" isn't the one paying for the iPhones.

This is why I still hung on to some of my Apple shares when I cashed most of it in a few years back. You've got to hand it to a company that can engender the kind of true-believerness that would say "No, really, I for one am glad it doesn't have an SD slot or longer battery life. If Steve Jobs wanted us to have unlimited storage, he would have provided for it, and who are we to question the Steve? His ways are not our ways."

Uh-huh.

Re:Perish

[Lije Baley]

All I know is that my wife (a non-technical, meat and potatoes user) is constantly whining about not being able to get what she wants due to lack of Flash or PDF reader. Yes, I know she can GET a PDF reader, but she doesn't understand what Apps are, let alone how to pick one from a multitude options. She is simply frustrated because the phone is supposed to "surf the web", but it doesn't do it like her desktop machine, and having experienced the portability of the phone, the desktop machine doesn't "do it" for her either.

Re:Perish

[wintercolby]

But Flash is an amazing platform enabling us to view and use content on the web . . . that we used to be able to download or purchase for fat clients on MUCH slower systems with less memory. In fact even all the embedded proprietary formats which required us to have other applications installed used fewer resources. We can thank Adobe for the latest push of demand for memory and processor cores.

Re:Perish

[jo_ham]

The iPhone reads PDF files natively. You do not need an App.

Re:Perish

[lwsimon]

"From a personal standpoint" - I don't use the above sites. That's not koolaid, that's a personal usage pattern.

I wouldn't recommend an iPhone to someone who needed one of the above sites. Indeed, I wouldn't recommend AT&T at all - their network isn't up to it in my area.

Re:Perish

[mikael_j]

Only because youve drunk so much of the koolaid and so used to be roughed up by corporations that you have no idea what its like to have a phone platform that does more

First off, I'll admit that I generally like Apple's products since they different parts are well-integrated (just to get that part out of the way, if that makes you think I'm a fanboy or that I've "drunk the kool-aid" then so be it).

Second, I've used and owned other smartphones that were much more capable than the iPhone on paper but which with real-world usage fell flat because of massive user interface issues, applications that leaked memory and general instability that made any perceived stability issues with the iPhone seem completely insignificant in comparison.

An example of this is the touchscreen on a friend's "high end" Nokia (I think) smartphone which together with the general UI lag makes using the phone painful, precision was so poor it was almost painful.

A second example would be my gf's phone (I can't remember the brand or model, the models are all 32789XS91080++ TouchTurboDeluxe gibberish to me), I experimented a bit with the UI and concluded that from the default "home" screen it took about half a dozen keypresses to get to the browser, once the browser was running I had to open a menu, scroll down to the "I want to visit a website" option and scroll down to the "I want to enter an URL manually" option before I could enter an URL. And that was the fastest path I could find. As a comparison, on an iPhone entering an URL involves tapping Safari, tapping the address bar and typing in the URL. It's hardly revolutionary but at least it's done right.

As for flash, the only times I miss that is when I stumble across some website designed by some incompetent hack who thinks the only way to do menu rollover effects is with flash...

/Mikael

Re:Perish

[gad_zuki!]

Of course you dont. Its a chicken and egg problem. Why would anyone send you a link to Vimeo knowing it wont work on your iphone? People know youtube has a special deal with Apple and a special app, so they'll send those links out. Its corporatist control and the opposite of open.

Re:Perish

[precize]

Hulu

Re:Perish

[maxume]

I would love to see Apple's internal numbers for complaints that such and such video site doesn't work, while Youtube works just fine.

Re:Perish

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not very familiar with Vimeo, but I just tried it on my iPhone and it appears to work.

Re:Perish

[lwsimon]

Granted. And Netflix.

But thank God, because AT&T's network is already slow enough :)

That's going to be an even bigger issue for the iPad, though.

Re:Perish

[element-o.p.]

Why would anyone send you a link to Vimeo knowing it wont work on your iphone?

You must have a much more tech-savvy circle of friends than I do. Most people I know and communicate with on a regular basis (outside of work, that is) neither know nor care about the underlying technology of various web sites and how they interact with the operating systems of the computers and gadgets that I use. Such conversations invariably look like, "What's active-x? That won't work on your computer? Oh that's too...hey, look! A squirrel!".

What they do know: "Hey, this web site is cool. I think I will send a link to everyone in my e-mail list!"

Re:Perish

[jo_ham]

"special deal" being "serves up video in H.264"

Other video sites can stream in H.264 too - and there are several very successful ones on the iPhone, like Sky Sports that have been using flash in the browser previously.

Re:Perish

[madddddddddd]

apples are PCs too...

Re:Perish

[Estragib]

perish [...] just like the Iphone

I'm inclined to believe there's a fair amount of people who, when their time comes, would just love to perish as the iPhone is perishing now.

The Company sold 8.7 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 100 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. (Apple Reports First Quarter Results, 2010/01/25)

Re:Perish

[Stuart Gibson]

Just to nitpick, Vimeo works perfectly on iPhone and, in fact, has an iPhone optimised interface.

As an aside, more people should develop their site to work on an iPhone first, then scale it up. It forces you to decide what it *actually* important on the site. If it isn't needed on iPhone, why is it needed on the full version?

Re:Perish

[Anonymous Coward]

As a counter to that, I'm glad flash exists so that I can use NoScript to block all the annoying adverts and crap. :)

Re:Perish

[snapple)(two]

Exactly. Imagine viewing a flash monstrosity such as Myspace or [Insert other site that's absolutely painful to view], it would be, for the most part unbearable. Now try to fit that to mobile screen. Unless it had an easily accessible "disable flash" button in the gui it would become much more of an annoyance than an asset.

Re:Perish

[Lije Baley]

Exactly. My point was that the Iphone is doing fine despite the fact that many ordinary users (like my wife) bitch about the lack of Flash. Outraged, sometimes yes. Giving up the phone, NO WAY.
Personally, I'm a long time Flash hater.

Re:Perish

[Anonymous Coward]

As an aside, more people should develop their site to work on an iPhone first, then scale it up

That's going to look really pixelated.

Re:Perish

[Anonymous Coward]

You were trolled. The first clue - mentioning he has a wife. Obviously he's just bullshitting.

Re:Perish

[halcyon1234]

Name a popular flash-only site than a majority of iPhone users visit on a regular basis on their desktop or laptop.

Homestarrunner.com. Or homestarrunner.org (it's Dot Com!)

Re:Perish

[peipas]

Further, the number of sites with iPhone-specific versions is surprising. The potential audience is so large that those same developers making fancy flash websites also seem to be making fancy iPhone-tailored editions.

Re:Perish

[MikeBabcock]

All flash game sites.

Id on't care if its Facebook games or Neopets, there are a lot of people who visit these and wish they could do it from their cell phones as well.

Re:Perish

[wiredlogic]

As an aside, more people should develop their site to work on an iPhone first, then scale it up.

Lord no. We are just now getting out of the era of web pages hard coded to 800 pixels wide. Having sites primarily designed around mobile screen resolutions will be a major annoyance to desktop users.

Re:Perish

[Island Admin]

Unless your site is specifically targeting iPhone users, this is a generally bad idea. Sure, design your site that if it is an iPhone browsing it, then it looks pretty on it. However most users still browser the net using traditional browsers.

Proper business and design processes make good secure websites.

Re:Perish

[smash]

Thing is, most of the complaints I or most people have with the iphone aren't deal breakers.

Battery life: I get about 3 days on my 3G-S, 1-2 if i use it heaps. Given that I can easily charge it when i go to sleep, its no big deal.

Memory cards - the 16gb i have is big enough.I've got more music than I legally own on there and am using only about 7gb.

Flash? Good riddance. I have yet so see a useful application for it yet.

Re:Perish

[Stuart Gibson]

Perhaps "scale" wasn't the best word. I'm not talking about resolution or anything so petty. I'm talking about using the limitations of the iPhone to work out what the actual important content is for your site and then use that as the basis for the site no matter where it's being shown. As a designer, you should be asking yourself "if this isn't important enough to make it to the iPhone version, why have I got it on the "real" version of the site. It's the principle of throwing stuff away until it no longer works, then putting the last thing back in.

A good example is the new Engadget site. It's a little sparse on the iPhone, but it's actually way easier to use than the monstrosity that is now their home page in a desktop browser.

Re:Perish

[Chrisje]

Hang on, hang on... The people on my mailing list don't have a clue where their e-mail with links/spam/jokes/photos will be read. It could be the iPhone, but the majority don't know (or care) I have one. It could be my mac, my windows laptop, it could be an anonymous machine in some airport somewhere. The "why would anyone" argument is pure and utter rubbish. "People" don't tend to know jack shit, really, and hence they send me all kinds of garbage I don't care about on a daily basis.

Quite frankly, until you guys mentioned it I had never heard of Vimeo. Period. And the fact that I've been an iPhone owner since October last year doesn't have anything to do with that.

Re:Perish

[AmonTheMetalhead]

Let me start of by saying i don't own an iPhone & care little about the stupid phones, but i just wanted to react to your list of sites there, none of those are sites i've visited or care about, same for 'flash games sites'.

The only flash heavy sites i use are Oracle's Metalink & youtube
Clearly your mileage may very

Re:Perish

[Chrisje]

I see comments like this all the time... "There are a lot of people who". I also see mention of "popular" sites I've never heard of in my life. Can any of these claims be backed up by numbers? Anything that measures what "lot of people" are, concretely?

Re:Perish

[AmonTheMetalhead]

I don't know which of my friends has an iPhone or not, nor would i even think about the possible lack for flash on their phone when sending an email with a frecking link, if they can't view it on their phone they'll view it later on their PC, how you can jump to the conclusion that it's corporatist control because of this is beyond me.

iPhone users get what they pay for, a nice shiney (severely) locked down phone, and i can't see why any technically inclined intelligent person would get one of those, i'll take function over form.

Re:Perish

[bemymonkey]

So they've moved to HTML5? Or are you using a Flash hack of some sort?

Re:Perish

[lwsimon]

I'm not aware of any way to make Flash work on the iPhone, so they must be serving h.264 through some mechanism. It may not be HTML5, though.

Re:Perish

[lwsimon]

I agree with you in concept - use the limitations of the smaller screen to pare down your content to what's really important, then question everything you add to the full-sized version.

Back in the days when I was a full-time web dev, I would generally start a document as raw HTML, and let the browser choose default styling. Once I had everything on the document I needed, only then would I start applying CSS and Javascript. Of course, the standards aren't equally supported, and some hacks were needed for practicality, and I ended up moving some things around here and there, but the idea was to build a document that could essentially be used on a text terminal, and work up into a full-fledged web page with all the whiz-bang functionality that the modern web has to offer.

Re:Perish

[lwsimon]

Yep - whether that is good or bad is up to the reader.

I visited Brownells.com, a major firearms parts distributor, last week while at a gun show, and imagine my surprise when I encountered their iPhone-tailored mobile site. It actually worked better than their full site...

Re:Perish

[bemymonkey]

You're right... just tried it on my Milestone and got direct links to H264 content. Now if only everyone would adopt this system...

Re:Perish

[Ihmhi]

Isn't that how it should be?

I mean, if I want to go from one city to another, it would be rather unpleasant to discover that my car does not fit on the road.

Re:Perish

[hazydave]

Most modern mobile devices have a screen resolution of at least 800x480, so we're just fine with those old hard-coded 800 pixel pages. These forthcoming tablets will probably have at least 1024x600.

Sure, it's better to reformat on the fly where possible, and support some lower resolutions. You may want to support a custom tiny, feature limited version for limited devices like iPhones and Blackberries. But a minimum of 640x480 has been around for 30+ years... no need for normal web pages to consider anything smaller. Most desktop users have 1024x768 or better, and should get to use that while navigating web pages.

Re:Perish

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if only [all video distribution sites] would adopt this [video distribution] system...

FTFY

Re:Perish

[jo_ham]

Better to be safe than sorry. Anti Apple posts with blatantly false information and mindless fear mongering tend to be taken quite seriously.

Re:Perish

[element-o.p.]

Absolutely. However, gad_zuki! made it sound like everyone he knows thinks about whether or not a certain web site will function properly on the device(s) he uses when they send him links. Maybe his friends do, but I don't think that's typical for most people.

Re:Perish

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe sucks, about time.

Re:Perish

[MikeBabcock]

Every female I know with a computer and a cell phone is addicted to either farmville or neopets or one of the other flash based gaming sites.

You know, women?

Re:Perish

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen!

Thanks to YouTube

[boudie2]

Checking today there are 3,180 videos matching the term "lighting farts". That and people reviving Rick Astley's career. It's a fun diversion, but you really have to wonder. About civilization.

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[gad_zuki!]

The most popular apps on iphones are fart simulators, yet we accept that platform as important.

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[g0bshiTe]

"Checking today there are 3,180 videos matching the term "lighting farts"."

The real question on my mind and alot of other /.'rs is of those 3,180 videos matching the term "lighting farts" how many combined views do they have?

Armed with that knowledge then and only then would I really begin to wonder about civilization.

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[MightyMartian]

From 1608:

The Censure of the Parliament Fart

Never was bestowed such an art
Upon the tuning of a fart.
Downe came grave auntient Sir John Cooke
And redd his message in his booke.
Fearie well, Quoth Sir William Morris, Soe:
But Henry Ludlowes Tayle cry'd Noe.
Up starts one fuller of devotion
The Eloquence; and said a very ill motion
Not soe neither quoth Sir Henry Jenkin
The Motion was good; but for the stincking
Well quoth Sir Henry Poole it was a bold tricke
To Fart in the nose of the bodie pollitique
Indeed I confesse quoth Sir Edward Grevill
The matter of it selfe was somewhat uncivill
Thanke God quoth Sir Edward Hungerford
That this Fart proved not a Turdd

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[Rei]

Sure, there's a lot of garbage on YouTube. But they're also a lot of great stuff. I've been introduced to more great music on YouTube than anywhere else lately... and I don't spend much time on YouTube. First it was Sigur Ros (incredible Icelandic ambient), then it was The Timeout Drawer ("space rock" with a slow build to a high crescendo), and lately Dean DiMarzo -- probably one of the most musically-talented high schoolers I've ever seen, a kid who does his own guitar, keyboard, drums, vocals, and mixing. Here he is embarrassing the parents of other kids while playing Boehmian Rhapsody in his high school band, here he does a drum cover of Daft Punk, and here's him shredding a Halo cover.

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[Petrushka]

It's a fun diversion, but you really have to wonder. About civilization.

People are still reading Aristophanes. Fart jokes have always been funny. I'm not worrying too much. (Not about that, anyway.)

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[boudie2]

It would be too time consuming to come up with an aggregate figure, but as an example, the top rated video which is described as "a montage of various farts and fart techniques" has 5,819,116 views Myself, I prefer the monkey riding the motorbike. He's quite good.

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[tibman]

It seems you've never visited 4chan then.. your wondering would cease and you'd curl up into a little ball.

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[jo42]

3,180 videos matching the term "lighting farts"

That is why around this neck of the woods we call it IdiotTube. And American Idol is referred to as "American Idiot".

- Brought to you by the "Just say No! to Idiocracy" coalition.

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[EdIII]

Fart jokes have always been funny.

I can't remember where I read it, but it was reported that the oldest known joke (hieroglyphics) was in fact a fart joke.

Personally, I think cavemen were farting in caves and laughing their asses off. The cavewomen of course were shaking their heads in disapproval. I suspect it goes as far back as humanity goes.

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[Rei]

After some searching, I came up with this list of supposedly the ten oldest jokes, as compiled by a University of Wolverhampton study commissioned by the TV channel "Dave":

-------
1. Something which has never occurred since time immemorial: a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap (1900 BC - 1600 BC Sumerian Proverb Collection 1.12-1.13)

2. How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish (An abridged version first found in 1600 BC on the Westcar Papryus)

3. Three ox drivers from Adab were thirsty: one owned the ox, the other owned the cow and the other owned the wagon's load. The owner of the ox refused to get water because he feared his ox would be eaten by a lion; the owner of the cow refused because he thought his cow might wander off into the desert; the owner of the wagon refused because he feared his load would be stolen. So they all went. In their absence the ox made love to the cow which gave birth to a calf which ate the wagon's load. Problem: Who owns the calf?! (1200 BC)

4. A woman who was blind in one eye has been married to a man for 20 years. When he found another woman he said to her, "I shall divorce you because you are said to be blind in one eye." And she answered him: "Have you just discovered that after 20 years of marriage!?" (Egyptian circa 1100 BC)

5. Odysseus tells the Cyclops that his real name is nobody. When Odysseus instructs his men to attack the Cyclops, the Cyclops shouts: "Help, nobody is attacking me!" No one comes to help. (Homer. The Odyssey 800 BC)

6. Question: What animal walks on four feet in the morning, two at noon and three at evening? Answer: Man. He goes on all fours as a baby, on two feet as a man and uses a cane in old age (Appears in Oedipus Tyrannus and first performed in 429 BC)

7. Man is even more eager to copulate than a donkey - his purse is what restrains him (Egyptian, Ptolemaic Period 304 BC - 30 BC)

8. Augustus was touring his Empire and noticed a man in the crowd who bore a striking resemblance to himself. Intrigued he asked: "Was your mother at one time in service at the Palace?" "No your Highness," he replied, "but my father was." (Credited to the Emporer Augustus 63 BC - 29 AD)

9. Wishing to teach his donkey not to eat, a pedant did not offer him any food. When the donkey died of hunger, he said "I've had a great loss. Just when he had learned not to eat, he died." (Dated to the Philogelos 4th /5th Century AD)

10. Asked by the court barber how he wanted his hair cut, the king replied: "In silence." (Collected in the Philogelos or "Laughter-Lover" the oldest extant jest book and compiled in the 4th/5th Century AD)
-------

I suspect that #2 is actually a double entendre, since "spearing fish" was an Egyptian euphemism for having sex (the word for "to spear" also means "impregnate", while the word for "throwstick" also means "to beget". The Nile marshes themselves were considered a symbol of fertility because of an association with Hathor.

The oldest joke from Britain was:

"What hangs at a man's thigh and wants to poke the hole that it's often poked before? Answer: A key."

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing I love the most about the internet is figuring out that all you people have terrible taste in music. I guess you could have linked to some crappier stuff, but it would probably require that you be deaf to find it.

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[Petrushka]

I can't believe that list leaves out Aristophanes altogether! All right, here's one from the Clouds that deals with farting.

Student. All right, do you want to hear another of Sokrates' ideas?

Strepsiades. What? Go on, tell me!

Student. Chairephon of Sphettos asked him his opinion on whether gnats sing through their mouths or out their arse.

Strepsiades. Wow! So what did he say about the gnat?

Student. His explanation was that the gnat has a very narrow gut, so the air gets very compressed when it goes through on its way to the arsehole. Then because there's a hollow space facing the tube at the butt-cheeks, it makes a noise because of the force of the wind.

Strepsiades. So gnats have a trumpet for an arse! Thrice-blessed man, what an enterologist!

-- Clouds 154-66, transl. me

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, lots of boring music to drowse off to. The kid is pretty good though. I can see him playing in a cover band on Friday nights at the local sports bar in a few years.

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[Randle_Revar]

>Dean DiMarzo

That's pretty cool stuff right there

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, fart jokes are still funny.
They might get a bit old and stale, but they are still funny.

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[ArsonSmith]

Or, i recently tore my ACL in my knee and will need it replaced:

"ACL Replacement" search: 569 videos.

some detailing actually surgeries, while others giving cgi based details on how the surgery works.

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[wiredlogic]

You haven't lived until you've seen the mashup with "Smells Like Teen Spirit".

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[Anonymous Coward]

it's because American's obsession with the anus, I don't really get it but they love their anuses a lot: farts, ass, shove, p0wn .. all related to the little and humble anus, such society! what a collection of worthless lechers IMHO.

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[Rei]

If you don't like ambient or space rock, why did you click the links? I took care to label the genres.

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[Chrisje]

Space Rock is a genre of music? Here I was, thinking it's, you know, a Rock. In Space.

Having said that, any music labeled space rock probably requires the listener drop acid to enjoy it.

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[Anonymous Coward]

That and people reviving Rick Astley's career.

hey that sounds interesting, got a link?

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[Rei]

Space Rock is a genre of music?

Wikipedia is your friend. :) It's actually a somewhat broad category, so to more precisely describe "1000 Reels" by The Timeout Drawer, one could say it's ambient-electric guitar-electronica that slowly builds from a simplistic, mildly atonal riff up to a theatrical crescendo, with vocals used as an instrument.

That detailed enough? :)

.h26x a stumbling point?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's my understanding that the codec used by youtube w/h264 is incompatible with Firefox for licensing reasons. True?

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[lwsimon]

I believe so - and the Mozilla folks are pushing for Ogg/Theora as a standard format.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Anonymous Coward]

And they are about to find out that the public sees right through their "new clothes".

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[TheKidWho]

Except for the fact that H.264 is hardware decoded on a lot of mobile devices.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Rashkae]

Well, close. Firefox will be unable to include the decoding of h264 right into the browser. But there is already work underway to simply hand over the video to an underlaying OS system, (Gstreamer for Linux, as example.). It will then be up to the user to aquire the required codecs and what not, which can't legally be distributed in North America as entirely free software, (but in practice, patents have never stopped free software before, only creates annoying red tape.) Gstream and ffmpeg have been able to handle h264 for longer than I remember, and I don't expect that to change at all. It's probably a good thing that Firefox will use existing software rather than creating yet another decoder to deal with.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[lwsimon]

But they've heard of h.264?

The target audience here isn't the general public, its the standards organization and the browser development management teams.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[h4rr4r]

What other option do they have?
h.264 patents make it incompatible with a whole host of open source licenses.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Anonymous Coward]

And that matters because ...? It's not like the average Joe would know what H.264 is either... or PNG, or CSS, or a ton of other basic web technologies.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[General Wesc]

Not many people have a clue what 'H.264' is either. You're lucky if they know what 'Flash' is.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[lwsimon]

That's not a huge stumbling block, AFAIK. There is no reason you couldn't hardware decode Ogg/Theora, and I would be willing to bet the support would be there if it became the standard.

I admit I'm a bit out of my league on this part though. I'm a web developer, this discussion is a bit closer to bare metal than I'm used to.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like my boss, who owns an ISP, that does not know the difference between Java, JavaScript, and Flash (he calls them all Java). Or the difference between Limewire, Bittorrent, EDonkey, and any other P2P protocol (he calls them all Bittorrent).

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't seem to get it. It's too late for ogg. H.264 is already in EVERYTHING. Your blu-ray player plays h.264, your ipod plays it, your psp plays it, your game console plays it, the graphics card in your PC plays it, your mobile phones play it. On top of that, H.264 has significantly better video quality, and will be free until at least 2015, and I'm willing to bet it will continue to be free after that.
This isn't just about HTML5. The war is already over. Wishing that devices will add support for theora at this point is like wishing that mp3 players would add support for vorbis. No one cares anymore, except about 0.1% of the population.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[mikael_j]

Well, the average "soccer mom"/"joe sixpack" may not have heard of h.264 but there are definitely a lot more users out there who know that h.264 is a video codec than there are users who know that Ogg Theora is a video codec (admittedly those who know of h.264 through warez probably think it's called x264 but that's still a lot more knowledge of h.264 than knowledge about Ogg Theora).

/Mikael

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Anonymous Coward]

That must be the reason why there aren't any open source h.264 encoders or decoders available.
Oh, wait...

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[lwsimon]

I never once advocated the format - you have one hell of a large chip on your shoulder there. I was just pointing out that Mozilla was pushing it.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[sricetx]

Yes, there's no reason you couldn't hardware decode Ogg/Theora on a mobile device, but all the existing deivices don't have the capability to do so. So if html5 adpot Theora as the standard, all existing smartphone users would be left out in the cold. I'm not saying they shouldn't adopt Ogg/Theora, in fact I think they should, but there are drawbacks.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Insanity Defense]

It will then be up to the user to aquire the required codecs and what not, which can't legally be distributed in North America as entirely free software,

Can't legally be distributed in the United States. Canada does not have software patents so it can be distributed here. I don't know about Mexico.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

You would apparently be surprised, then, by the number of mp3 players that support vorbis(not even counting the ones that can be rockboxed). Some will even do so without mentioning the fact.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[otuz]

The average "soccer mom"/"joe sixpack" are pretty good at leeching torrents nowadays and most of them learn that stuff labeled with "h264" are better than stuff labeled with "xvid". Ogg Theora, nobody knows about that, except a few nerds.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[bzipitidoo]

H.264 has significantly better video quality

Wrong. Ogg Theora is nearly identical in quality to H.264. Both are a lot better than H.263. Judge for yourself: http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html

will be free until at least 2015, and I'm willing to bet it will continue to be free after that.

If there are no alternatives, I'm sure H.264 will not remain free. Once everyone is hooked, why on Earth wouldn't the owners start charging money for it? Because they're such nice people? LOL. If they have no plans to start charging for it, why don't they make it free forever, starting now? Since they have not done so, obviously they are hoping they can eventually charge money for it.

The war is already over

Propaganda. If it was over, we'd all know that already. The fact you feel you have to make a proclamation suggests you're not sure yourself, or that you have a hidden agenda. You say it's everywhere, and that's why it has already won. It's not nearly as widespread as you seem to think. Many of us do not use Blu-Ray. Much video on the Internet is still H.263.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again... they have the option to LEAVE IT UP TO THE UNDERLYING MEDIA LAYER OF THE OS! Windows 7 (DirectMedia) does H.264 built-in, it can be had for Linux (gstreamer/xine), it's supported in hardware on many mobile platforms, ipods do it... not sure about macs, but I assume they can as well.

Why Mozilla is even bothering to build in support for a specific codec is beyond me. Just delegate it to the OS, that's why media layers and codecs exist, and most other media apps use them (I say most... VLC and some others don't, but in general this is a service the OS provides to applications).

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[koro666]

[...] Just delegate it to the OS [...]

So next time there is some remote code execution vulnerability in DirectShow and/or its codecs, you want Firefox users to be affected too?

Face it, with the amount of "plugins" installed by default in Firefox these days in the back of the user (Acrobat, Silverlight, WPF, Windows Media Player, etc.), Firefox has become as much vulnerable as Internet Explorer, if not more because of its lack of usage of Vista's integrity levels.

Let's not add another nail to its coffin.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Anonymous Coward]

The same could be said about any library or OS service Firefox uses (and it uses many on any platform it runs on, as does any modern application)... or for that matter, any software that isn't completely written from scratch and reinventing the wheel for everything it does.

You make a very good point, but the real question is where to draw the line? If you depend on other code/libraries/execution/services/whatever, this is always a risk.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Anonymous Coward]

H.264 has significantly better video quality

Wrong. Ogg Theora is nearly identical in quality to H.264. Both are a lot better than H.263. Judge for yourself: http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html

That's a joke if I've ever heard one. Theora doesn't COME CLOSE to h.264. The theora proponents always link to that same page, which is just BS, because if you actually WATCH the videos it's not hard to see that the theora encode looks FAR worse than the h.264 on practically every frame.

But maybe you are old and have feeble eyes. Here is another comparison where it should be much more obvious: http://saintdevelopment.com/media/ Notice how the theora version doesn't retain any detail at all?? Yea, that's some good quality video there.

And I have a hidden agenda? Yes, I will admit that I do indeed have an agenda. I like to see video that doesn't look like crap, so I advocate that people use the codecs that result in the highest quality video. And there is absolutely no better codec at the moment than the free and open source x264.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Kjella]

1) Sure linking to a comparison on xiph.org, that'll be unbiased. Please, can we have a comparison that isn't devoid of all neutrality?

2) Lots of companies in the MPEG LA have an interest in making H.264 videos free to play, like say all those selling H.264 cameras and selling editing software and encoders and whatnot. Microsoft and Apple are already licensing it for Windows and OS X, I'm sure they have licenses that are permanent to make it a base technology like that. In other words, this is getting very close to patent FUD.

3) Look around, everywhere MPEG2 and H.263 is considered legacy and slowly being replaced with H.264. Theora is like Vorbis, the only place I ever hear about it is on slashdot. To your "Propaganda. If it was over, we'd all know that already." is that some people here are like the Iraqi information ministry. There is no threat from H.264, the glorious Theora is victorious on all fronts.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Kjella]

Well, close. Firefox will be unable to include the decoding of h264 right into the browser. But there is already work underway to simply hand over the video to an underlaying OS system, (Gstreamer for Linux, as example.).

Last I heard from Mozilla was "we could, but we'll do no such thing to protect your freedoms". Has that changed recently, or are you talking about a patched version that won't come with Firefox's trademark?

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Rashkae]

your news is more current than mine, but hardly matters. If Firefox wants to martyr itself, a new and better fork will be up in less than a day.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Anonymous Coward]

H.264 is significantly better then Theora. The comparison on xiph only shows similar quality because Youtube uses suboptimal settings on x264 and the Theora guy cranked the settings as high he could get them.

You may notice he sacrificed things like seeking granularity to increase Theora's effectiveness, if he had used similar settings then it wouldn't be as close.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[onefriedrice]

Well, close. Firefox will be unable to include the decoding of h264 right into the browser. But there is already work underway to simply hand over the video to an underlaying OS system, (Gstreamer for Linux, as example.).

Last I heard from Mozilla was "we could, but we'll do no such thing to protect your freedoms". Has that changed recently, or are you talking about a patched version that won't come with Firefox's trademark?

Hopefully. Personally, I'd rather have the freedom to choose h.264 and the freedom to finally dump flash than the freedom to examine the Mozilla codebase (which I've never done nor do I plan on ever doing). But, you know, I'm a tool and all that.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there's no reason you couldn't hardware decode Ogg/Theora on a mobile device, but all the existing deivices don't have the capability to do so. So if html5 adpot Theora as the standard, all existing smartphone users would be left out in the cold.

This is not the case. Many smartphones use a DSP to accelerate H.264 decoding. You can use the same DSP for accelerated Theora decoding:

http://www.schleef.org/blog/2009/11/11/theora-on-ti-c64x-dsp-and-omap3/

Millions of devices have the capability to accelerate Theora playback. All they need is the software.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a joke if I've ever heard one. Theora doesn't COME CLOSE to h.264. The theora proponents always link to that same page, which is just BS, because if you actually WATCH the videos it's not hard to see that the theora encode looks FAR worse than the h.264 on practically every frame.

It doesn't look "far worse". It may be a problem with your player software. Try watching the Theora encoded video in Firefox.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[westlake]

Microsoft and Apple are already licensing it for Windows and OS X

Canonical is on the list of licensees I posted above.

Google and Adobe, Netflix and Nullsoft. The list goes on and on and on.

Hardware acclerated H.264 video is in the Flash 10 Beta 2 for Windows. Silverlight has it now.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Anonymous Coward]

H.264 is significantly better then Theora. The comparison on xiph only shows similar quality because Youtube uses suboptimal settings on x264 and the Theora guy cranked the settings as high he could get them.

You may notice he sacrificed things like seeking granularity to increase Theora's effectiveness, if he had used similar settings then it wouldn't be as close.

The point of the comparison was to contrast what YouTube is doing today with H.264 video versus what they could do today with Theora video. The conclusion is that for YouTube's purposes, on the basis of quality and bitrate, H.264 and Theora are rough equivalents. He didn't sacrifice seeking granularity in the Theora encodes. The only time he mentioned it at all was when he was speculating on YouTube's reasons for producing H.264 video in the way that they do.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Anonymous Coward]

And I have a hidden agenda? Yes, I will admit that I do indeed have an agenda. I like to see video that doesn't look like crap, so I advocate that people use the codecs that result in the highest quality video. And there is absolutely no better codec at the moment than the free and open source x264.

x264 isn't free. Sure, the implementation is open source but that doesn't count for much as you can't use that implementation without a licence from the MPEG-LA.

Google uses x264 in Chrome and probably uses it for YouTube's backend. How can they do this? Simple. They bought a licence for H.264 from the MPEG-LA.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[koro666]

The same could be said about any library or OS service Firefox uses [...]

True, but vulnerabilities are found much more often in high-level, complex services such as DirectShow, MSHTML or the JScript engine, than, say, basic stuff like the C Runtime Library.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[CSMatt]

Your blu-ray player plays h.264

What Blu-ray player?

your ipod plays it

Nope.

your psp plays it

No PSP.

your game console plays it

Try again.

the graphics card in your PC plays it

Sure. In software.

your mobile phones play it

I have one mobile phone, and it barely takes pictures.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[xaxa]

It will then be up to the user to aquire the required codecs and what not, which can't legally be distributed in North America as entirely free software, (but in practice, patents have never stopped free software before, only creates annoying red tape.)

Such red tape is particularly annoying for those of us outside North America.

It would be nice if various Linux distributions automatically installed all the useful, patented codecs iff I didn't select USA (or Canada?) as my location.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Anonymous Coward]

so did they ever replace the H.264 video on their site with one that wasn't full of junk data?

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[hazydave]

Yup.

Basically, the HTML power-that-be set out to establish video as a first-class thing within HTML, via the tag. Much as with , they would not dictate precisely what kinds of video would be supported, but basically allow the browser to play it or fail. BUT... there was general consensus that, as with JPG and GIF, originally (and later, PNG) there ought to be known standard formats that everyone supported.

The Mozilla folks, backed by Opera and a bunch of FOSS entities, back Ogg Theora as the video CODEC that should be "built-in" on all web browsers. They do this because Theora is open source... it's based on On2's VP3.2 CODEC, which was released as open source after they had produced their VP4 CODEC. They gradually opened the source even more, eventually granting the Xiph Foundation a "do whatever you like with it" BSD-like license, including the free use of any governing patents. "Theora" is named for Theora Jones, a character from the "Max Headroom" series.

Anyway, the opposition, including Apple, Google, and various others back H.264 instead. Some of this is de-facto.. H.264 is already the standard used in most modern video these days: satellite and some cable TV, European HD broadcast, YouTube, iPhone/iPod, etc. It is, of course, not free, but administered by the MPEG-LA, the same licencing organization that deals with other MPEG and related IP. The FOSS folks reject this because it means no built-in free H.264 CODEC, and as well, potential frees for internet broadcast, even per-view fees (which have been promised, but regularly rolled back to date).

Big companies are also somewhat concerned about the patent implications of VP3 and Theora... there aren't tested in court, and there's no organization like the MPEG-LA ready to take the legal heat if there's any new patent exposure. It's so far just a fear, but not a trivial one. The other is for streaming video: companies like YouTube spend nearly all their money in network fees... the cost of delivering video. Ogg Theora is less efficient than H.264, so switching to H.264 would result in a quality loss or much more costs, neither of which is deemed acceptable.

I actually understand both positions. But Mozilla takes it one step further... they won't just not support H.264 as a built-in, but they do not intend to support external video CODECs. That seems to be a very stupid position: video CODECs for many different kinds of video are now a standard part of every major OS, just like device drivers moved from hacks or in-application to in-OS back in the 1980s or so. Many OSs (for example, Windows 7 and MacOS X) ship with H.264 drivers built in. It's actually important to at least have the option of using an OS driver in preference to anything you might build in to your application, simply because OS-level drivers can very often use your hardware better.

A couple examples. It's impossible to play 1080p H.264 in software on a 1GHz ARM A9 processor. Yet, in the nVidia Tegra 2 chipset, you can not only play 1080p H.264 video, but you can play it at very low power, around 200mW. They have a rockin' accelerator for it... same as most every handheld device today. Another one... most desktop PCs play 1080/60i or 1080/30p pretty well, as long as they have dual core or so CPUs. But 1080/60p is pretty challenging. I have been shooting 1080/60p video for sports video, much better. It'll play in VLC, sort of... it's choppy, and using 40-60% of my total CPU, this, on a Q9550 PC. Running in evil old Windows Media Player in WIn7, I get perfect 60fps, full screen on one of my 1200p monitors, using 12% CPU. Why? That video CODEC is tapping DXVA 2.0, which is offloading much of the work to my nVidia 8800GT, which would otherwise be sitting around, all 118 stream processors given nothing to do.

So with Mozilla, it's not just sound open source philosophy, it's religion. There's no reason they shouldn't support OS-level CODECs, they're just trying to leverage Firefox's popularity to force others to adopt Theora as the one and only default CODEC.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[discord5]

http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html

Oh boy, this page AGAIN. I shall stop the sarcasm engine I started up last time someone quoted this thing as an irrefutable fact. From that page:

The primary challenge is that all files at these rates will have problems, so the reviewer is often forced to decide which of two entirely distinct flaws is worse. Sometimes people come to different conclusions. That said, I believe that the Theora+Vorbis results are substantially better than the YouTube 327kbit/sec. Several other people have expressed the same view to me, and I expect you'll also reach the same conclusion.

Why, several people have expressed that they thing the Theora codec might be better, and he (one of the xiph.org people) tends to agree. I'm sorry, but could you please do something a little more than encode the same video with two different codecs and then a jedi-handwave accompanied by saying "Oh this looks so much better, and my buddies with a xiph.org e-mail address tend to agree" ?

How about pointing out flaws in the generated videos, artifacts that will definitely be present at low bitrates, the effect of the encoding on colors, or how well both codecs perform in a scene where everything moves?

The war is already over

Propaganda. If it was over, we'd all know that already.

Does anyone here remember the CD-i? DVD-RAM? MD ? How about the more recent one HD-DVD? (I'm sure someone has an xbox, so that should be a bit more popular). Format wars are never over. Hell, people still argue about Betamax vs VHS. A format war is good for only one thing: making geeks froth at the mouth like a cappuccino. For the rest, the industry will play its part and the war won't be won on technical merits. By the time this thing is settled another format war will take and it'll be cappuccino time all over again.

a hidden agenda

Oh noes! THEY ARE AMONGST US! Posting on our boards, subverting our free codecs by spreading words.

Many of us do not use Blu-Ray. Much video on the Internet is still H.263.

My mother doesn't own a DVD-player, nor does my grandmother. I'd call the DVD pretty much a (set of) standard(s) though. I strongly believe that the next big thing in media-land will no longer be a physical medium, and what's more, we'll beg the industry for more a dollar at a time. And I think that ultimately that will be the deciding factor on this whole debate, but I might as well be wrong in that belief. Only time with tell, but in the meantime: froth on, kind sir!

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[hazydave]

The main reason you might not be able to hardware decode for Ogg Theora is simple: these devices already exist, they don't necessarily have the hardware, and certainly not the software, for accelerated Theora decoding. So it's going to take some work to even discover if some reasonable percentage of today's devices could decode Theora. Which means you need a real incentive to get device manufacturers and OS creators to do this.

Now, look at who these folks are. You have Google. Apple. Microsoft. Palm. RIM. Nokia. Does anyone have a strong incentive here, unless somehow, magically, Theora DID become the web standard? Not to mention that the hardware's already cast, and may simply not be retargetable to Theora so easily... the acceleration in the ARM/PowerVR and TI SOCs was designed with H.264 specifically in mind. It's a bit different on desktops... much of the very good H.264 acceleration you get today is done by graphics cards, using more general purpose resources.

Then, you have video streaming guys like Google... they're happy with H.264, and do not want Theora as a standard, because it's less efficient. That means real money to them... YouTube's primary expense is the cost of streaming video. In fact, Google recently bought On2, ironically the company responsible for the VP3 CODEC upon which Theora is based. On2 has VP7 and VP8 CODECs today... supposedly, VP8 is even more efficient than H.264, particularly at low bitrates. It's quite possible Google's planning to switch from H.264 to VP8 on YouTube in the not too distant future... that would actually save them fairly big bucks, if VP8 is as good as claimed.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[hazydave]

Not to mention other things. H.264 is used in satellite and cable television. It's the recording CODEC for nearly all tapeless HD consumer video cameras, some pro cameras (Panasonic's AVC-Intra) and an increasing number of digital still cameras with video. Some smartphones record in H.264. So you're going to want interchange... if I ever buy a "tablet" computer, it'll be able to dock to my camera or camcorder, and play back 720p (camera) or 1080p (camcorder) on that 10" screen... or I'll wait for a tablet that can. H.264 is the standard CODEC for the early 21rst century. If it's replaced, as it's has largely replaced MPEG-2, that will take something substantially better. Not something worse.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[hazydave]

if you actually WATCH the videos it's not hard to see that the theora encode looks FAR worse than the h.264 on practically every frame

Indeed. And consider... this is the Xiph web site.. these are the Ogg Theora development people. So what you're seeing there is the best argument they could construct, and it still fails.

Theora is at an inherent disadvantage, and always will be. It was, after all, based on On2's VP3, which they tossed out there for free once VP4 was shipping. They're on VP8 now, and recently bought by Google. Anyway, they are inherently limited by the improvements they can add, because they're likely to trip on any number of video encoding patents that have been filed in the 10 years since VP3 was released. This, in fact, is one big concern from the big companies involved in HTML5... if you're an MPEG-LA licensee, you're covered should any new patents emerge on H.264, as unlikely as that is. But Theora hasn't been all that tested.

I have absolutely nothing against some open source CODECs being available, I think that's great, and would put pressure on the MPEG-LA to keep H.264 free. But Theora is the wrong answer. Right answers? Well, it needs more work, but the BBC's Dirac CODEC is more competitive, if just as much of a problem on handheld gear. Google could release VP8 to the FOSS community, which is said to be noticeably more efficient than H.264 at lower bitrates. Both still could have patent entanglement issues, however.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[hazydave]

Yeah... except, the Mozilla folks have already said they're not going to do this in Firefox:

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2009/06/directshow_and.html
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2010/01/video_freedom_a.html

To summarize: there are functions in the OS that do these things, that every other piece of software uses, that have been in the OS for over a decade, and that do these functions better than a CODEC embedded in our Web Brower ever will. Thus, we refuse to use those interfaces.

I suspect next, Mozilla will be writing their own video drivers, file system, PDDs, etc. since they can't trust any of those to be 100% functional. Or maybe, they should just write the stinkin' web browser, and use the parts of the OS that are written by folks who know those functions better than Team Mozilla.

Of course, what'll really happen is that someone will hack Firefox to use the OS routines, and before you know it, Firefox will be about as popular as Navigator is today. Or it may slip completely, overtaken by Chrome. Religion is like that... it's a guaranteed fail, when it's put up against rational thought.

Re:Title bar color?

[Qubit]

Why is the title bar red?

Forced Evolution, duh!

Haven't you been paying attention?

or.....

[tacokill]

On that day all browsers will be HTML5 compatible or they will perish in the flames of user outrage

Or, like the thousands of examples that came before.....people will simply go to another website that does not have such requirements.

But don't let me rain on your parade.

Re:or.....

[Maxo-Texas]

What other sites have content like You Tube?

Seriously? Where else can I go for similar content?

Re:or.....

[tepples]

In before other people mention DailyMotion, LiveVideo, MySpaceTV, and Vimeo.

Re:or.....

[geegel]

There are plenty of clones. I use some Romanian ones. No pesky DMCA notices there and they also have audio streaming, but there's a tad less content. Enjoy: http://www.220.ro/
  http://www.trilulilu.ro/

Re:or.....

[Anonymous Coward]

All of which blow.

Re:or.....

[ClosedSource]

Are you talking about pirated TV and movies or junk like cell phones that can pop popcorn?

The former is available elsewhere and the latter wouldn't be missed.

Re:or.....

[regular_gonzalez]

Not even the same ballpark. That's like needing to drive to Chicago for the weekend and your car has broken down. Your friend pipes up, "Hey, we can take a go-cart!"

Re:or.....

[tepples]

Not even the same ballpark.

True, Vimeo bans commercial use and apparently noncommercial fair use and use under license, which ends up banning all videos of video gaming. But could you explain why you claim the other three video hosting services that I mentioned are "[n]ot even the same ballpark" as YouTube?

Re:or.....

[dangitman]

Or, like the thousands of examples that came before.....people will simply go to another website that does not have such requirements.

Riiiiiiight. They're going to go to a different site, instead of simply clicking on the link provided to download Google Chrome and install it.

I don't think you quite understand how many users YouTube has. If YouTube stops working, people won't switch to a different site, they'll switch browsers to make it work.

Re:or.....

[mcvos]

What other sites have content like You Tube?

Not everybody needs content like You Tube.

Lots of people still use IE6. Do you know why? Because their employer needs them to access ancient web apps that only work in IE6. Their employer doesn't need them to access You Tube.

Re:or.....

[Ginger Unicorn]

I can't believe you went to the trouble of putting the "n" in square brackets to indicate that you changed the case in your quote.

Re:or.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm... no.

It's like naming several other sites which contain similar content to Youtube, but maybe not as much.

I'll grant you that Youtube has far more content than any of its rivals.

Google is the new Microsoft, and the fight to tear their monopoly from their grasp will be just as drawn out as the one to wrestle codecs and APIs from Microsoft was.

Great content, but we will never know if there could have been a better one while they have the monopoly.

Re:or.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading court opinions linked from sites like Groklaw will do that to you.

Re:or.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Nowhere, which is why the GP is full of shit.

Re:or.....

[ae1294]

He fucking asked so don't mod me down bro. The site has the exact same quality of material as youtube with a bonus. No over9000, rickrolls or other shitty MEME's...

Re:or.....

[steelfood]

Funny thing about computer programs: You can sort of turn that go-cart into a formula 1 with nothing more than time.

Re:or.....

[evilviper]

What other sites have content like You Tube?

Seriously? Where else can I go for similar content?

http://www.flashvideodownloader.org/supported-sites/

and this is how google wins

[circletimessquare]

some business school moron could have said "hey, why don't we leverage our power and force a proprietary format on consumers, and they will be our captive audience"

like microsoft

like sony

etc

has any of it worked? no

for all the anxiety about google's increasing power, as long google does something like this: actively undermine and destroy a closed format in favor of an open one, then the consumer wins, google wins, other companies win, progress and innovation wins, and shortsighted greedy assholes who try to manipulate market inefficiencies in their favor lose (i'm looking at you, music and other media companies). in this context, at least, google really is "doing no evil"

Re:and this is how google wins

[Rockoon]

for all the anxiety about google's increasing power, as long google does something like this: actively undermine and destroy a closed format in favor of an open one

You mean like how Google actively undermines H.264?

Yes. I am very impressed that they are actively undermining H.264.

Definitely it can be said that Google actively undermines H.264.

Re:and this is how google wins

[Anonymous Coward]

H.264 is a open standard, patent encumbered, but open, with several available decoders/encoders.
Compare to flash, where theres ONE implementation, by the same company writing the "standard", and licensing prohibits writing a compatible decoder...

Re:and this is how google wins

[Anonymous Coward]

Good points, all. But my condolences to your "Shift" key -- oh, and the period, too. I wish them both a speedy recovery.

In case you are still able to cut and paste, please feel free to borrow some of mine in the meantime:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ .....
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ .....
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ .....

Re:and this is how google wins

[colinrichardday]

So gnash is illegal?

Re:and this is how google wins

[Anonymous Coward]

has any of it worked? no

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=msft

You have a funny definition of "has not worked" ...

Re:and this is how google wins

[jo_ham]

He doesn't have TIME to obey the rules of grammar; he's too busy making a low-budget HDV Filipino movie in NYC! Obviously that is far too time consuming to allow him to type like an adult. Strangely, his sig actually contains punctuation and capital letters - a concept that he called useless and unnecessary, unless you're trolling for distributors/viewers/publicity for your film I guess.

Re:and this is how google wins

[lordmetroid]

No, gnash is not illegal the previous poster is just a little bit misinformed, you can write your own decoder but you have to do it in a cleanroom fashion.

Re:and this is how google wins

[Anonymous Coward]

like microsoft

Office, WMV, DirectX, .Net, XBox

like sony

Playstation, BluRay, RIAA

has any of it worked?

I dunno, they seem to be doing OK, or at least, I'd like to be as "unsuccessful" as they are.

Re:and this is how google wins

[mattack2]

MSFT 52 week range: 14.87 - 31.50
GOOG 52 week range: 289.45 - 629.51
AAPL 52 week range: 82.33 - 215.59

Though if you go 5 year, you see the others have gone much higher, yet MSFT started and ended near 25..

Re:and this is how google wins

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be the _next_ battle they'll fight. Even Google has to pick their battles sometimes.

Re:and this is how google wins

[zippthorne]

You make a good point. Although one might argue that standardizing on a format with five years of patent risk some years down the line is an improvement over "using that same format, but also wrapping it in another even more proprietary format."

Re:and this is how google wins

[Phroggy]

Reverse engineering in a cleanroom environment will protect you from copyright infringement, but not patent infringement. If it's patented, it doesn't matter if you come up with the idea independently; whoever was awarded the patent owns the idea until the patent expires and you cannot implement it without a license from them.

Re:and this is how google wins

[Anonymous Coward]

will you please explain?

Re:and this is how google wins

[boxwood]

ummmm... isn't BluRay Disc a proprietary format? Seems to be working out ok for sony.

Re:and this is how google wins

[stonertom]

Flash is also (mostly) an open standard http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/. It's just there is lots of it to implement, so the OSS versions are incomplete.

Re:and this is how google wins

[Anonymous Coward]

The container doesn't matter.

Re:and this is how google wins

[mcvos]

H.264 is a open standard, patent encumbered, but open, with several available decoders/encoders.

How is it open when it's patent encumbered? And open standard means anyone is free to implement it. Patents usually mean you need a license.

Re:and this is how google wins

[kegon]

Can it be said Mozilla is undermining H.264 ? They are not planning to support it.

Or maybe IE6 is going to undermine HTML5 ?

Re:and this is how google wins

[Rockoon]

Yes, well I am not arguing against H.264. I am actually an ardent supporter of the format (with or without patents) precisely because it is already widely adopted. I am ashamed of my browser maker (Opera) for not supporting it.

Most of the readers on slashdot already have an H.264 license. Win7? Vista? OS/X? Flash? Silverlight? iPhone? Chrome? Safari? Its hard to imagine that very many people go without these days.

Sure, the 100% FOSS crowd is an edge case of people that go without, but they are for lack of a better term just a vocal minority and the vast majority of them know where to get "illegal in their region" H.264 codecs.

But back on topic: Google doesnt give a rats ass about undermining the proprietary. Its not a rational business strategy, so its not a rational google strategy.

Re:and this is how google wins

[hazydave]

Open != Free (as in beer).

Open standards are, well, open standards. H.264, VC-1, AC-3, USB, 802.11, 802.3, etc. They're published standards, anyone is free to implement them. This is entirely aside from whether there are patent entanglements or not.

And in fact, you probably know whether there are patent entanglements in published standards, because there's a licensing body that both takes your licensing fees (independent of any other corporate control -- thus, still open, same deal for all comers), or it's 20 years old, thus, no patents left. Other things, well, you may expect it to be without patent entanglements, but do you really know? VP3 was patented by On2, but Xiph has a free license for those patents. But it's only ten years old... are the really in the clear with Theora going back before 2000? Have they added any improvements over VP3 that might be newly entangled? And most of all, if I'm a big company and start using Theora, who's paying the settlement costs if someone does come out of the woodwork and sue me?

life in the old browsers yet

[petes_PoV]

On that day all browsers will be HTML5 compatible or they will perish in the flames of user outrage

While youtube is nice for idling away some downtime, it's not the internet-dominating force this article makes out. If it disappeared tomorrow, than apart from instantly increasing corporate productivity and allowing children everywhere to get their homework done on time, there wouldn't be so much of a change.

There are also (sit down, this might be a bit of a shock) lots and lots of people who rarely, if ever visit youtube. For them, it's existence or change in the tech. it needs will make no difference at all - if their old browsers fail I'm sure they find other things to do on the internet.

While I'm sure youtube will keep going - for some time at least, and will change more over time there's nothing life changing about it.

Re:life in the old browsers yet

[Anonymous Coward]

There are also (sit down, this might be a bit of a shock) lots and lots of people who rarely, if ever visit youtube.

Just like there are also lots and lots of people who can't get anything better than dialup. I've had friends of mine ask me why they never get YouTube to work only for me to have to explain why their dialup connection won't handle it properly. Give the vast majority of the US a proper internet connection and I bet the number of people not using YouTube would shrink a good deal.

Re:life in the old browsers yet

[tsm_sf]

You're not really making a distinction between people who are surfing the tubes for recreation and people who are working or studying. If you're just kicking around, then youtube and co. are certainly optional stops. But it's also the prime gathering point for stuff like TED talks, "man on the street" video reporting, Sagan mashups, HOWTO videos, out of circulation educational films, and so forth. It's not really that important to have all of this hosted by YouGoogly, but it is nice to have one place to start your searching.

As far as "life changing" is concerned, I think would depend on if you're in the "funny cat" camp or the "last lecture" camp. You may, in fact, be doing it wrong.

Re:life in the old browsers yet

[FranTaylor]

"If it disappeared tomorrow, than apart from instantly increasing corporate productivity"

Really? My employer uses YouTube a lot. We make YouTube videos of customer recommendations. Having an engineer gush about all of the time he saves with our product makes a very effective sales tool.

A lot of companies use YouTube for instructional videos for their products. Why bother with complex printed directions when you can watch a real live human do it?

Really you should not dismiss the value of something just because YOU can't figure out how to do something useful with it.

Re:life in the old browsers yet

[fm6]

it's not the internet-dominating force this article makes out.

Did you miss the part about networks being overwhelmed and major fight over who pays for the bandwidth? That's pretty major. Maybe not "dominating", but that's your word.

If it disappeared tomorrow, than apart from instantly increasing corporate productivity and allowing children everywhere to get their homework done on time, there wouldn't be so much of a change.

Have you been following the news at all over the last two years? Just a few days ago, the FDIC felt compelled to rebut corruption allegations in a viral video. Other such videos has successfully promoted or destroyed movies, more or less put ACORN out of business, and a lot more. There are niche video stars who now make a living doing with schticks that nobody would have heard of without YouTube. Meanwhile, TV ratings continue to shrink...

There are also (sit down, this might be a bit of a shock) lots and lots of people who rarely, if ever visit youtube.

So? There are also lots of people who still don't have cell phones. In both cases, it's a reasonable choice, but it's not the way things are trending.

Re:life in the old browsers yet

[Anonymous Coward]

If it disappeared tomorrow, than apart from instantly increasing corporate productivity and allowing children everywhere to get their homework done on time,

I know this was just a tangential joke, but I think it's worth pointing out that the lack of YouTube wouldn't mean anything with respect to productivity. People spend a certain amount of their day relaxing/spacing-out. Whether this time is "necessary" to remain happy, focused and productive, or whether it is an "unavoidable" aspect of human laziness is debatable but largely irrelevant. This "time wastage" will always happen. If it were not YouTube it would just be something else (trip to the water cooler, doing a crossword in the paper, etc.).

As for whether or not YouTube is an Internet-dominating force, I do agree that the world would go on without it. But that's largely because other video sites would grow to fill the vacuum left by it. Again whether it's truly good/necessary or just wasteful/unavoidable is irrelevant: people will want to watch/make/trade silly videos online.

But until YouTube actually disappears, it holds considerable mindshare and thus considerable clout. If YouTube makes a change in the way it works, you can bet that browser makers will take notice and adjust their product so that their users can keep accessing the site. It's not like YouTube has unilateral control over the evolution of Internet standards, but they do have a large enough user base that they can have a strong effect on how browsers work.

Re:life in the old browsers yet

[complete loony]

How many of those businesses that have forced their users to remain on IE6 have also blocked youtube?

Re:life in the old browsers yet

[General Wesc]

While youtube is nice for idling away some downtime, it's not the internet-dominating force this article makes out. If it disappeared tomorrow, than apart from instantly increasing corporate productivity and allowing children everywhere to get their homework done on time, there wouldn't be so much of a change. There are also (sit down, this might be a bit of a shock) lots and lots of people who rarely, if ever visit youtube.

If YouTuber viewers discover that YouTube now works on Perfectly Good Browser and not on their current browser, some of them will switch browsers, at least in their home environment. 100%? No, but when just 10% = 10 000 000 people, it's hardly a trivial issue. Okay, maybe not a 'perish in flames' feature, but it is something of note.

Re:life in the old browsers yet

[Kjella]

While youtube is nice for idling away some downtime, it's not the internet-dominating force this article makes out. If it disappeared tomorrow, than apart from instantly increasing corporate productivity and allowing children everywhere to get their homework done on time, there wouldn't be so much of a change.

You're right, but there's a big difference between YouTube disappearing and YouTube not working for you. People link to YouTube all the time, be it friends or chats or blogs and even newspaper articles do that around here, it'd be like a part of Internet that is broken to you. Personally, I think moving from flash/H.264 to HTML5/H.264 is a great step forward, and those that are desperately trying to hold it back (Mozilla, Opera) just aren't achieving anything. Even if they will or can not support H.264 natively or via system codecs you can always play it in their browser via flash, no matter how little they like it. They have no force to push a change to Theora and since everybody won't support it all the providers are looking at double the systems and double the support cost, so there's no business case to motivate anyone else.

Re:life in the old browsers yet

[regular_gonzalez]

2007: Youtube accounts for 10% of all traffic
2008: Youtube accounts for 35% of all streaming video; Streaming media accounts for 50% of all internet traffic. Doing the math, that puts Youtube around 12-15% of *all* traffic.

There's no good alternative because there's no good alternative.

Re:life in the old browsers yet

[TheGeniusIsOut]

There are also (sit down, this might be a bit of a shock) lots and lots of people who rarely, if ever visit youtube.

Just like there are also lots and lots of people who can't get anything better than dialup.

While both of these statements may be true, that does not make them equate one to the other. There are many people, myself included, with a broadband connection of >10Mbps that do not use YouTube for the simple fact that there is rarely anything of intellectual interest to be found within its pages. The rare YouTube video that does fill the role of intellectually stimulating is usually found through the dissertation pertaining to the content rather than browsing YouTube.

Re:life in the old browsers yet

[mattack2]

You do realize the TED talks are downloadable in iTunes, right?

Re:life in the old browsers yet

[Anonymous Coward]

While both of these statements may be true, that does not make them equate one to the other. There are many people, myself included, with a broadband connection of >10Mbps that do not use YouTube for the simple fact that there is rarely anything of intellectual interest to be found within its pages.

As I indicated, giving broadband to more people would just increase the number of people using it by a decent amount. But then I don't imagine most people watching it are looking for intellectual videos. I tend to watch it when I'm waiting for a background task to complete.

Re:life in the old browsers yet

[that this is not und]

The place I used to work (layoff last October) blocked YouTube.

But the funny thing was, if you went into your browser (IE6 I might add) and just turned off the proxy setting entirely, everything they blocked Just Started Working(tm).

People working in places with 'blocked' web access should try that- just turn off the proxy in the browser setting and see what happens.

Re:life in the old browsers yet

[mikechant]

People working in places with 'blocked' web access should try that- just turn off the proxy in the browser setting and see what happens.

They get fired for a 'serious and deliberate breach of corporate security policy'?

Re:life in the old browsers yet

[mikechant]

There are many people, myself included, with a broadband connection of >10Mbps that do not use YouTube for the simple fact that there is rarely anything of intellectual interest to be found within its pages.

Just a couple of examples of 'intellectual interest':

Youtube is a priceless archive of thousands of hours of rare video footage of quality musicians performing (blues, folk, acoustic etc.). Many of the videos are not obtainable by any other means and record television appearances etc. from across the world going back fifty years.

It also has considerable footage of historical interest from abandoned buildings etc. which have often been subsequently demolished.

Re:life in the old browsers yet

[DavidShor]

That's a little elitist, no? Youtube has millions of videos: Opera, lectures in higher math, talks by nobel-winning lauriates, speeches by politicians...Hell, there are songs about graduate mathematics! If you can't find anything of intellectual interest on Youtube...it's because you're boring and closed minded, not because you're smart.

Re:life in the old browsers yet

[tehcyder]

Why can't your company just have the videos on your own web site then? What purpose does using YouTube have, other than give the impression of amateurishness?

Re:life in the old browsers yet

[jwhitener]

"While youtube is nice for idling away some downtime, it's not the internet-dominating force this article makes out"

Completely not true. Hundreds of universities host content. Youtubes api's, transcribing, and other tools make building video sites around youtube streams easy. It is very expensive to host videos in house, Youtube makes it free, easy, and meets ADA needs.

Schools alone would be in serious upheaval if Youtube went down. And I'm sure that is just one slice of the pie.

If Youtube ever shuts off flv streaming...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

There won't be enough waaaambulances in the entire world to handle the mass-casualty incident at Adobe HQ...

Re:If Youtube ever shuts off flv streaming...

[derGoldstein]

They won't. TFA is just extrapolating in fictitious directions to get attention (what else is new). They'd damage the most valuable thing they have: their massive audience. How did people react when they started pulling support for IE6? Multiply that by a few thousands.
It makes a nice story about how Google would "force their way" onto the industry, but it doesn't work like that. They care, dearly, about what their users do/think/behave, and pissing them off by doing something that the vast majority of users won't understand the reason for is something they would never do.

Re:If Youtube ever shuts off flv streaming...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Oh, I agree that they would have absolutely no reason to do that(If nothing else, my understanding is that recent versions of flash can act as a not-especially-competent h.264 player, so there wouldn't even be server-side storage concerns).

I just find imaging Adobe's reaction to be highly amusing. Ever since Apple snubbed them for the iPhone, they've tarted up their proprietary runtime as the "Open screen project" and emitted a steady stream of sad noises about anybody who thinks that Flash could possibly be a bad thing(merely opening the website of said "open screen project" caused both cores of my machine to peg, so I have zero sympathy). Losing a high-profile case like Youtube would likely increase their whining considerably, though I see it as an extraordinarily unlikely event.

Re:If Youtube ever shuts off flv streaming...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is then, when they will remember that they should have allowed installations of their Creative Suites on file-systems with case-sensitivity turned on...

User outrage more likely to be at Google

[Spy Handler]

On that day all browsers will be HTML5 compatible or they will perish in the flames of user outrage

Most users don't know and don't care about the standards wars. What's more likely to happen is:

• User has been using IE and watching YouTube for umpteen number of years
• Google shuts out Flash and IE, only supporting HTML 5
• User notices YouTube doesn't work anymore
• User gets angry at YouTube, not IE. MS isn't the one that changed something, Google is.
• Google backpedals in a way reminiscent of New Coke in 1986

Re:User outrage more likely to be at Google

[inanet]

User sees link "Can't see the video? Click here to remedy and download Google Chrome" user downloads and installs Google Chrome. Microsoft cries in pain. Users these days are a good deal smarter than they used to be, if someone is smart enough to install flash, they are smart enough to install Chrome.. for the most part, or they will have a kid / friend who will do it for them.

Re:User outrage more likely to be at Google

[Sinning]

Or..

• Google notifies users to download an HTML5 compatible browser.
• User moves to Chrome and never looks back to IE.

It may actually benefit Google to give users a reason to switch to Chrome.

Re:User outrage more likely to be at Google

[baka_toroi]

User gets angry at the computer, not IE, not YouTube.

Re:User outrage more likely to be at Google

[lordsid]

Are you trying to say Google is afraid their trademark on youtube will run out and come out with NewYouTube in response?

Because otherwise you epically fail at analogies.

Re:User outrage more likely to be at Google

[maugle]

Google would be stupid to shut off Flash support entirely. But there's nothing stopping them from making it increasingly more difficult to get to the Flash content, while making the "Your browser is obsolete, use one of (list of alternative browsers)!" messages increasingly larger and more annoying.

The end result is that Joe User doesn't get angry at YouTube for "suddenly not working", but eventually gets the message that his browser is broken and needs upgrading.

Re:User outrage more likely to be at Google

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think user smarts count that much. People end up going to google searches in horders and falling into the top two or three forums looking for a solution (remember, they will just believe their computer is broken, and not that the website or browser had anything to do with it.)

Remember that this is exactly what happens when people are being hit with new viruses and their PC acts a particular way, or when they need a new codec for pr0n downloads they got off the pirate bay --flash is for browser-only play. For bathroom play in someone's PSP, the choice won't be FLV player formats... it will be downloadable WMVs and AVIs, which people have problems with because of the whole 'one container, 9000+ codecs' issue. At least divx and some formats have died out in favor or system-bundled codecs.

Anyway, us linux people are experienced hunters, but the codec support business is a great pain every time we test out an unknown/new distro. Now, THAT is more or less how the newbs will feel even if Youtube has some friendly message. I already do with Ubuntu's "click here to get proprietary codecs our your MP3 media will never play"

I'm trying to see what's wrong with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm trying to see what's wrong with this scenario, but I cannot. Flash needs to die.

"Accurate" Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

"HTML5. Your browser doesn't support HTML5? Google launches its own browser, Chrome." ...if you happen to have the Google Chrome Frame extension installed and are using Internet Explorer and opted in to HTML 5.

But why let details bother you?

Re:Title bar color?

[theNetImp]

oh I wish I had mod points...

Google should work on Google stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Google should work on Google stuff instead of attacking Microsoft at every turn. Apple tried this for a long time. Apple attacked Nintendo, Playstation, AOL, Microsoft, etc...

When Apple finally quit the bologna and concentrated on things their customers wanted they did MUCH better (iPod, iMac, iPhone).

Maybe Google should worry about their customers instead of Microsoft?

I know focusing on customer needs is an INSANE concept to big companies today so I apologize for saying something so nutty and far-fetched.

Re:Google should work on Google stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Google should work on Google stuff instead of attacking Microsoft at every turn.

They are just giving a nudge to the slowest dinosaur.

Re:Google should work on Google stuff

[General Wesc]

Right, because creating a free, high-quality web browser and open sourcing the codebase didn't do anything to help customers. Allowing users to use a standards-compliant web browser AND access the systems required by their job didn't do anything to help customers. Shifting to (relatively) open standards won't do anything to help customers.

It almost sounds like your problem is that Google isn't being evil enough. I find myself lacking sympathy.

When that day comes...

[actionbastard]

Many Shuvs and Zuuls will know what it is like to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!

Cart or Horse first?

[JSBiff]

" The final blow will be the day that YouTube switches off Flash and starts streaming only to HTML5 browsers. On that day all browsers will be HTML5 compatible or they will perish in the flames of user outrage."

Except, YouTube won't turn off Flash until a super-majority of users have HTML-5 compliant browsers. (Actually, since a super-majority is usually considered to be 60% or 66%, that probably still wouldn't be enough - I wouldn't shut off any potential customers until I was north of 90% deployment, though Google may surprise me and throw the switch a bit before that). No business that hopes to succeed just shuts off the ability for any significant portion of their customer base to consume their product.

Re:Cart or Horse first?

[Etherized]

You're right, of course. Google will continue to support Flash in some fashion for quite a while; they can't really afford not to. If Youtube blocks flash, some other site that provides a flash option will pick up the slack, and youtube perishes in the flames of user outrage.

There's nothing particularly unique about Youtube, except that it was the first and currently largest site to "just work" with video clips. Let's not forget that Flash, for all its sins, is what even made this possible to begin with.

I personally suspect that the benefits of HTML5 will be very clear to many users, especially on mobile devices where Flash simply is not viable. It should be a case of superior technology ultimately winning out, just as long as the word is actually spread (and it's in google's interest to spread it).

Youtube currently gives you the option to "opt in" to HTML5, and that's excellent. In the future, they may give you an option to "opt in" to Flash, and they'll tell you that performance may suffer for it. They don't really need to kill Flash entirely, because Flash is good enough at killing itself.

Re:Cart or Horse first?

[The MAZZTer]

Google will probably throw up an info bar a bit before the switchover if your browser is not HTML5 compatible, warning that YouTube is dropping support for said browser and so get a new one if you wish to keep using YouTube... it would have a link leading to a list of HTML5 compatible browsers you can install such as Firefox, Chrome, ChromeFrame, Safari, etc. Or just ChromeFrame, for IE users, though I think even now Wave offers browser suggestions too as well as ChromeFrame.

Re:First

[M8e]

Forced Pen....no wait?

HTML5 Video: A big No-No

[fysdt]

I don't think HTML5 video will ever be successful, flash video/flv is very dominant.

Re:HTML5 Video: A big No-No

[DaMattster]

Well, Google has the marketplace cornered for streaming video sites with YouTube. It has the power to effect such a change so don't be so shortsighted.

Re:HTML5 Video: A big No-No

[Anonymous Coward]

And here's a good example of how anti-mods would be useful. This was the exact opposite of insightful.

Re:HTML5 Video: A big No-No

[Anonymous Coward]

Y2K called and left the following message:

I don't think Flash video/flv will ever be successful. RealMedia is very dominant.

Re:HTML5 Video: A big No-No

[shermo]

The trap has been laid... *waits*

http://xkcd.com/326/

Re:HTML5 Video: A big No-No

[element-o.p.]

Back when I graduated from high school, cassette tapes and VHS were the dominant audio/video format, and they haven't been displaced, either!

Erm...I mean...oh, nevermind.

Re:HTML5 Video: A big No-No

[DerekLyons]

Well, Google has the marketplace cornered for streaming video sites with YouTube. It has the power to effect such a change so don't be so shortsighted.

Assuming of course that people don't visit YouTube, find it 'broken' and go on to one of the other video streaming sites. So yeah, it does have to power to effect change. It also has the power to shoot itself in the foot with an atomic cannon.

Re:HTML5 Video: A big No-No

[ThrowAwaySociety]

I don't think HTML5 video will ever be successful, flash video/flv is very dominant.

I don't think Flash video will ever be successful, since RealPlayer is very dominant.

Sincerely,
1999.

Re:HTML5 Video: A big No-No

[cynyr]

google is smarter than to just drop support for flash overnight with no notice. I'm betting like the above proposal there will be flash support for a few to several months, where if you fall back to flash you get a message bar that says you are using the old youtube and that it is being phased out, see this link for more info. The link will provide instructions that grandma can follow to get something else(chrome being the recommendation, FF/opera/safari being listed in the "more browsers" link).

Re:HTML5 Video: A big No-No

[ClosedSource]

People go directly to YouTube if they want to browse silly videos. If they are looking for particular videos they'll use search to find them. If that leads to YouTube, they'll go there, if not, they'll follow a link elsewhere.

If the serious people find that YouTube no longer works for them they'll just skip those links when they search for what they're looking for. Instructional or promotional videos are usually hosted in more places than just YouTube.

Re:HTML5 Video: A big No-No

[Anonymous Coward]

Mid 90s called and left the following message:

I don't think RealMedia will ever be successful. VivoPlayer is very dominant.

Chrome Frame

[tepples]

User gets angry at YouTube, not IE

"YouTube no longer uses Flash. Now we use Chrome Frame to provide you with new features. Click here to install Chrome Frame." The user response really isn't that much different from the "Your Flash Player is too old" that YouTube started serving once Nintendo finally upgraded Wii Internet Channel from Flash 7.

Re:Chrome Frame

[derGoldstein]

Sure, and piss off IT support all over the world. Companies that lock their employees in IE don't let them install plugins apart from a pre-approved list, which is usually installed in advanced. They have the corporate world to deal with, and they won't be as easy to convince as average Joe will.

Re:Chrome Frame

[0123456]

Why are corporate employees watching Youtube at work? Obviously there may be some useful technical talks and the like, but in most companies very few people have a legitimate reason for doing so.

And any company which locks their employees into using IE probably deserves everything they get.

Re:Chrome Frame

[derGoldstein]

Why are corporate employees watching Youtube at work? Obviously there may be some useful technical talks and the like, but in most companies very few people have a legitimate reason for doing so.

For the same reason they'd browse Facebook and have a twitter app on the side -- people aren't machines. It's true that quite a few companies block facebook/youtube/twitter/myspace, but they're not the majority. Any "sane" company worries about employee output, not how said employees go about producing it.

And any company which locks their employees into using IE probably deserves everything they get.

This includes many government institutions in the western world. They use IE because it's easy to administer across a large network. The major hurdle for any non-IE browser is to get into corporate environments -- people using their computers at home already know (for the most part) that pretty much any browser is better than IE.

Re:Chrome Frame

[0123456]

Any "sane" company worries about employee output, not how said employees go about producing it.

So, why would that company worry about whether those employees can access youtube? You think the CEO will be complaining to the IT staff because Accountant #23 can't access fart videos on youtube?

This includes many government institutions in the western world.

As I said, they deserve everything they get as a result. But you're right, I guess government employees spend a lot more time at work watching Youtube and posting pictures of their cat to Facebook than the average company employee does.

Re:Chrome Frame

[tepples]

Why is Flash on the list but not Chrome Frame?

Re:Chrome Frame

[dangitman]

Sure, and piss off IT support all over the world.

IT support is constantly pissed off about everything, anyway - so what would be the difference? It's IT's job to support the users, not to act all pissy because they don't like what the user wants.

That's what Chrome Frame is for

[tepples]

YouTube won't turn off Flash until a super-majority of users have HTML-5 compliant browsers.

That's one reason why Google made Chrome Frame: to make every copy of IE for Windows that's not completely locked down into an HTML5 compliant web browser.

IE6 rules!

[Anonymous Coward]

Management is going to be VERY happy that youtube will stop working with older web browsers. User productivity is going to skyrocket.

Re:IE6 rules!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. And the best part is that mindless non-geek drones in IE6 cubes won't have any computer rights to install Safari, Firefox, Chrome and company. You can't justify this need for "HTML5" technology installations to middle management when the only sites using it are media ones. If management isn't already blocking sites like youtube for them, they'll just be glad that their IE6 will be used for the zombified ActiveX company purpose that caused them to deploy IE6 perpetually in the first place.

HTML5 is as obscure to the general public as IPv6. I don't see it stamped on consumer router boxes, but have Apple and Dlink provide some support. Silent support is easier to add on hardware (routers) than software, since IT has an ever-tightening club on those bundling-happy google / apple installer apps.

Ok, so that makes Three...

[macs4all]

Apple, Google, and now Microsoft (among others) have announced they won't be supporting Flash.

Think it's not doomed now?

The industry verdict on Flash: You have wasted too many CPU cycles and therefore must DIE!

Good riddance. There is absolutely no reason why Flash should be such a resource hog. Adobe has become even fatter and more lazy than even Microsoft, and is about to receive a rude awakening (just like MS has been getting from Apple for the past 10 years or so).

Re:Ok, so that makes Three...

[fysdt]

Why would Microsoft for example use flash when they could use silverlight?

Re:Ok, so that makes Three...

[macs4all]

Why would Microsoft for example use flash when they could use silverlight?

To keep people from whining (like they do about Apple's iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad) that it doesn't support Flash, and therefore is unworthy.

Having said that, I agree with you that in MS' case, it could be a Silverlight ploy; but, since they also axed Multitasking in Windows Mobile 7 at the same time (like Apple's iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Hmmm...), methinks its more a problem (like Apple realized) of battery life, heat, and poor performance (this time), rather than them trying to push Silverlight.

Even marketing must sometimes bow to the laws of physics.

Re:Ok, so that makes Three...

[hazydave]

Huh? Google has been saying "Flash is coming for Android, 2010" since mid-2009 if not sooner. Adobe just announced AIR and Flash for Android: http://www.pcworld.com/article/189338/adobe_shows_flash_and_air_apps_for_google_android.html

Apple doesn't want Flash, Air, Java, or any other means of loading applications onto an iPhone. They want total control, and as many commercial apps as possible, so they get paid. That's the only reason they're not supporting Flash, Java, or other defacto web standards on the iPhone, despite the fact that's currently making the iPhone a lower-class web client.

Microsoft is the only proponent of Silverlight, a competitor to Flash that's just as proprietary. So it's quite natural they would not be supporting Flash themselves on their WinMo devices... 'scuse me, their "Windows Phone 7" devices... a new name with each revision. Of course, had you read the link you posted carefully, you would know that Microsoft is working with Adobe to allow them to release Flash for "Windows Phone 7". I would estimate, at this point, Microsoft will do everything they can to not screw up their new platform, and "better web experience than iPhone" will be one of the standard targets of, well, everyone but Apple.

And in fact, it is Adobe's job to push Flash. They're doing that, too, even on Linux .. they recently joined the LiMo Foundation, and play to support Flash on Linux phones and other devices: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20000072-264.html

Google's YouTube is moving away from Flash, for very good reasons: they're a video site, and Flash is just extra baggage, once you have standard video. That's very different than Google saying "no Flash anywhere". YouTube is an entirely different concern than smart phones and tablets.

Arrogance...

[blahplusplus]

... the reason flash became so popular was because there was nothing better.

I think anyone who thinks HTML5 video is going to displace flash has to look to how MP3 was not displaced by better formats like AAC, OGG, etc, etc.

Re:Arrogance...

[TClevenger]

I think anyone who thinks HTML5 video is going to displace flash has to look to how MP3 was not displaced by better formats like AAC, OGG, etc, etc.

Actually, that's EXACTLY why Flash will be replaced by HTML5. MP3 support is basically built into every media player out there, while AAC and OGG aren't. If HTML5 is built into every browser, but Flash requires a download (and frequent updates because of security holes), HTML5 will win in the long run.

Re:Arrogance...

[Yaur]

There is no credible alternative to H.264, which is patent encumbered and not freely (as in beer) available, as the HTML5 video codec which will make it difficult if not impossible for Firefox to support... ubiquitous HTML5/H.264 video is unlikely to materialize any time soon.

Re:Arrogance...

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again, this would be easy for Firefox to support.

If it's not a supported format (ogg), they just hand it off to the OS's media layer. The user likely has an H.264 codec available in their OS somewhere (whether it came with the OS, got installed by other software, or whatever)... and if not, the video won't play so the user is no worse off than if Firefox didn't even try.

Windows: DirectMedia
Linux: gstreamer/ffmpeg
Mac OS: Quicktime
Mobile: (many have hardware h.264 decoding built-into the device)
etc.

It's easy, and has no patent issues on Mozilla's part. If only Mozilla would see it this way :(

Re:Arrogance...

[Anonymous Coward]

No doubt Flash plugins for web browsers will still be around for a long time, because of the amount of Flash content already in existence.

But I don't think your analogy quite works; I don't see HTML5 vs. Flash as being the same situation as AAC, etc. vs. MP3 (and not just because HTML5 is not itself a video coding format).

To me, the key difference is that music is something you want to store, back up, copy to your iPod, and so on. If you like it, you'll want to listen to it again and again. Video -- especially all of that YouTube fad-of-the-day video -- is more likely to be streamed and viewed once, then forgotten, making the underlying format much less important.

Re:Arrogance...

[SEE]

If HTML5 is built into every browser,

Pretty damn big "if", there.

Microsoft has expressed no interest in supporting HTML5 at all in Internet Explorer. It's been made very clear that Firefox will not support patent-and-royalty encumbered H.264. Opera joins Mozilla in its hostility to H.264. "It plays on Safari and Chrome" is not a compelling sales pitch on either side of the creator-viewer divide.

On the other hand, Flash? The plugin is already ubiquitous; Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, and Solaris all have Flash 10, and it works with both NPAPI and ActiveX browsers. It's been used for years, and there's masses of content already developed for it, so the need for it isn't going away any time soon.

Re:Arrogance...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, because of MP3 players that only play, you guessed it, MP3s and raw audio? Flash support on embedded devices is hit-and-miss, so it doesn't have the same grounding that MP3 does. Plus OGG has no major corporation fighting for it (although AAC and AC-3 have effectively won in a sideways way, through DVD audio), which is what Google will have. Ultimately HTML5 will replace Flash, the question is only when, and with what codec.

Re:Arrogance...

[CSMatt]

It is possible to argue that AAC is displacing MP3, albeit silently.

For example, how many people who rip their CDs with iTunes actually go into the preferences and change the format from AAC to MP3?

"MP3" is synonymous with "audio" for most people. Chances are that, especially with Windows' default hiding of extensions, they have no idea what the file is really encoded in. And as long as they can play it, they have no reason to care.

Re:Arrogance...

[Anonymous Coward]

Internet Explorer already supports a number of pieces of HTML5.

Open Web alternative to Newgrounds?

[tepples]

the problem is not that the iPhone doesn't support Flash, the problem is that Flash, as a proprietary overlay to the open Web, even exists.

gad_zuki! makes a good point: Is the open Web capable of delivering an experience analogous to the Flash animations and games seen at, say, Newgrounds?

Re:Open Web alternative to Newgrounds?

[tagno25]

Yes, HTML5 can replace Flash for almost ALL uses, including games

Re:Open Web alternative to Newgrounds?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, that's really encouraging.

So once HTML5 is used all over, we'll get to see some really loud and intrusive advertisements? That's fantastic! I can't wait!

And what about the weekly exploit or two? Flash has never missed a beat. Will browsers implementing HTML5 expose us to at least the same level of risk that Flash does?

Will HTML5 also cause my browser (even if it's just a sandboxed tab) to crash several times per day, like Flash does now? I sure hope so, otherwise the experience just wouldn't be the same.

Re:Open Web alternative to Newgrounds?

[maxume]

Uh-huh, because the html5 developers aren't deaf to that segment of the content production market. 10 years ago, no open standard was anywhere near flash.

Re:Open Web alternative to Newgrounds?

[yelvington]

And what about the weekly exploit or two? Flash has never missed a beat. Will browsers implementing HTML5 expose us to at least the same level of risk that Flash does?

Will HTML5 also cause my browser (even if it's just a sandboxed tab) to crash several times per day, like Flash does now? I sure hope so, otherwise the experience just wouldn't be the same.

Sadly, those features are missing from early versions of HTML5 browsers, but perhaps Microsoft will step up to the plate with HTML5+ Enterprise Edition Bonus Pack.

Re:Open Web alternative to Newgrounds?

[derGoldstein]

Encase the above statement with "in theory". In practice, Flash is an IDE that programmers *and* artists use to develop content, and they can do so on the same software. What would you have Flash-trained graphic designers use that's even remotely capable of letting them be as productive as they are with Flash? Without production software, and a large company behind it to support users, HTML5 will not reach the same level of variety and interactivity as Flash. Yes, you'll have polymaths that can create both the graphics and the code, but they're individuals, there's no training course for "graphic design & JavaScript & HTML5 all in plain text".

Re:Open Web alternative to Newgrounds?

[JackAxe]

No it can not. If anything it's a throwback to earlier versions of Flash in terms of its capabilities and performance -- as in it's slower.

HTML 5 still has the same cross browser limitations as HTML 4 and even if every browser conformed to one standard, it would still be lacking when compared to plug-ins like Flash and SilverLight, which will only benefit from HTML 5 and will continue to evolve and offer capabilities that browsers can not. So nothing will really change, it will just get better for all of us.

Re:Open Web alternative to Newgrounds?

[zmollusc]

Bah! I hate having to dick around with stupid flash animated picture galleries etc. Give me a nice html page with ftp links to your content, I may be on a slow gprs link and viewing the content on a separate device.
Too many duhsigners and arsetists.

Re:Open Web alternative to Newgrounds?

[Anonymous Coward]

Joking aside, recent "stable" releases of both Firefox and Chrome crash more for me than IE ever had. Opera is still the only browser I'd actually consider to be stable.

Re:Open Web alternative to Newgrounds?

[tepples]

Yes, HTML5 can replace Flash for almost ALL uses, including games

Can? Yes. Does? Not until there is a vector animation editor that outputs HTML, SVG, JavaScript, and whatever else is needed and is as easy to use as the high-three-figures Flash IDE.

Re:Open Web alternative to Newgrounds?

[Toonol]

I'm skeptical. But also...

Once you can make annoying animated music playing hovering popup advertisements in HTML5, won't they be even harder to filter out than Flash?

Re:Open Web alternative to Newgrounds?

[Anonymous Coward]

gad_zuki! makes a good point: Is the open Web capable of delivering an experience analogous to the Flash animations and games seen at, say, Newgrounds?

Yes. See DHTML Lemmings. It was written six years ago. WebGL is also on the horizon:

http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/09/webgl-for-firefox/
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/09/three-more-webgl-demos/
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/10/webgl-in-the-wild/
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/12/webgl-goes-mobile/
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/12/webgl-draft-released-today/

And here's WebGL combined with Theora video to create a 360 degree interactive video:

http://bjartr.blogspot.com/2010/01/long-delayed-webglu-update-some-360.html

Re:Open Web alternative to Newgrounds?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. While it may be easy to block Flash altogether, as it stands not even Firefox with Adblock Plus can block all ads served via Flash. HTML5 will definitely be a step up from that.

Re:Open Web alternative to Newgrounds?

[VJ42]

Yes. See DHTML Lemmings. It was written six years ago.

There goes my day... Just don't tell my boss.

Re:Open Web alternative to Newgrounds?

[Anonymous Coward]

HTML5 doesnt have cross browser limitations... BROWSERS have cross browser limitations.

Re:Open Web alternative to Newgrounds?

[troll8901]

... perhaps Microsoft will step up to the plate with HTML5+ Enterprise Edition Bonus Pack.

Usually Enterprise products require Client Access licenses. And probably Connector licenses too, for connections over the Internet (only US$8000 per license).

Re:Open Web alternative to Newgrounds?

[CopaceticOpus]

For one thing, you can make annoying animated music playing hovering popup advertisements today without using Flash.

Once HTML5 is in place, the browser will have more control over how audio and video is played. This means that the browser or a browser extension will be able to block audio and video from unapproved sites, in the same way that Flash and Javascript blockers work today.

But which codec?

[R.Mo_Robert]

The bigger issue is not Flash or HTML5, it's which codec implementers of HTML5 will choose to support. Mozilla, for good reasons (IMHO), is not willing to support H.264, but that seems to be the direction YouTube is heading. But as good and open as Theora is, I think don't believe there is any hardware with a Theora accelerator (yet?).

In any case, some support browsers both H.264 and Ogg Theora, some support only one, and we all know Microsoft is unlikely to support either any time soon.

Re:But which codec?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla, for good reasons (IMHO), is not willing to support H.264, but that seems to be the direction YouTube is heading. But as good and open as Theora is, I think don't believe there is any hardware with a Theora accelerator (yet?).

You can make use of the DSP that's used for H.264 acceleration and use it for Theora acceleration or any other similar workload. That's what's been done here:

http://www.schleef.org/blog/20...-c64x-dsp-and-omap3/

As mentioned in the post, that work is broadly applicable to Nokia's N series of phones, the Motorola Droid, and the Palm Pre. There are millions of devices in the field today which are capable of accelerated Theora playback. All they need is the software.

See also Christopher Blizzard's post on the importance of open formats to the future of the web:

http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/webl...anding-with-the-web/

In the comments Christopher Montgomery from Xiph.org, the foundation behind Theora, says:

"As for the chicken/egg problem of hardware support, several big commercial groups are already scrambling to get over it, partly because full Theora support in hardware is so much simpler than full h264 support. It’s a tiny fraction of the complexity. You practically get that many transistors for free in the today’s average cardboard cereal box. Can’t say more– NDAs. But that’s OK, it will be reality or not soon enough."

As you say, Microsoft's lack of HTML5 support will probably be a problem for some time. Fortunately, it can be worked around with Cortado or Highgate media suite's Theora for Silverlight

Re:But which codec?

[ducomputergeek]

Then I would be very worried if I were Mozilla. Because if it no longer works with web videos users will flock to Chrome, Safari, Opera, or IE which are available as free downloads to them and so long as it is free as in beer, most people don't care if it's free as in opensource.

Re:But which codec?

[Randle_Revar]

Your links got chopped, the right posts are pretty easy to find right now, but just in case:

Theora on TI C64x+ DSP and OMAP3
This is really cool, and I hadn't seen it before

HTML5 video and H.264 – what history tells us and why we’re standing with the web

Re:But which codec?

[hazydave]

Or maybe this one: http://www.schleef.org/blog/2009/11/11/theora-on-ti-c64x-dsp-and-omap3/ (your link failed for me).

Yeah, they're using the DSP, and that's something. But the H.264 acceleration is more than just DSP code on these TI parts. There are hardware units used to accelerate various parts of the video decode pipeline. This is clear from his demo: despite Theora being a lighter weight decode, he's limited to a somewhat jerkey 640×360/24p, which he pronounced "good enough". Perhaps on an iPod, but if you're using a DROID or another modern smartphone, you're going to want the full 848x480/30p... which plays perfectly on mine, from AVC.

The problem, of course, is supporting this all over the place. All modern phones have hardware acceleration for H.264, but they get it in different ways. The OMAP 3430 is probably your best bet for Theora acceleration, because of the DSP just sitting there. On the iPhone, they're presumably using the PowerVR H.264 acceleration hardware, which is much less flexible... maybe it maps to the needs of Theora (certainly, H.264, Theora, WMV, and MPEG1/2 are all DCT-based compression schemes), maybe not. But is Mozilla really taking on every platform? Won't they have the same problem with low-levels docs on these as they did on the OMAP?

Re:But which codec?

[hazydave]

The 0xdeadbeef article definitely states Mozilla's position... though they use incorrect language. H.264 is NOT a proprietary CODEC. It's a published ITU standard...the specs are available to anyone. Same idea as HTML4, 802.11, 802.3, JPEG, USB, PCI, 1394, Open Document Format, 1284, etc... an open standard, managed by a recognized standards body.

"Proprietary" would be something like the old RealMedia CODEC, Microsoft's WMV prior to their opening it as the VC-1 standard (SMPTE), the Cineform or Apple Intermediate CODECs used for HD video editing, Adobe Flash, etc. In short, the details are a trade secret, at least some of them. Patents may or may not actually be involved, but either way, the only chance you have of supporting such things legally is a clean-room reverse engineering of the proprietary item (which, in some countries, Germany for instance, is a protected right... it's a bit more dubious in the USA, particularly if they tossed in some encryption, to kick the DCMA into effect).

What they don't like about H.264 is really that it's "patent encumbered"... that it's still covered by patents, at least in those parts of the world that recognize software patents. To be taken seriously, they really should use correct terminology... this article makes the author seem rather ignorant of the whole H.264 situation. I'm fairly certain he's just using "proprietary" because it's a scare-word, particularly to radical FOSS types.

Re:But which codec?

[evilviper]

Mozilla, for good reasons (IMHO), is not willing to support H.264

Mozilla not only refuses to support H.264, but refuses to allow it to be supported by 3rd party plug-ins as well. Their reasons for this are most certainly NOT "good", and is all about PR.

Theora isn't going to take over the world. The quality is terrible, and I can provide quotes from 10 of the top Open Source codec developers stating that even in theory, it can't possibly even compete with OLD codecs. Not to mention how horrendously it is to code for.

If Mozilla wanted video in HTML5, they would have already included MJPEG with PCM audio, H.261, MPEG-1 video/Layer-2 audio, musepack, flac, speex, etc, etc. But those weren't developed by infallible ideologues, so that's no good. What the Mozilla team really wants is a victory for their preferred dogma.

That's not to say the H.264 side of this isn't filled with schills of a similarly contentious and irrational nature, but let's try not to bend the truth here.

Re:But which codec?

[Randle_Revar]

I'm fairly certain that I don't care whether it is "proprietary" or "patent encumbered". Really, for me, "patent encumbered" is plenty proprietary.

Re:But which codec?

[jrincayc]

Is there a good comparison available between MPEG-1 Video/Layer-2 audio and Ogg Theora/Vorbis?

The iphone does not support a single one of the codecs you listed that Mozilla could support:
  http://www.apple.com/iphone/how-to/index.html#help.song-video-or-other-items-wont-play

(Okay, both Firefox and the iphone support PCM audio only.)

Call H.264 "the Blu-ray codec"

[tepples]

The public has heard of Blu-ray. The codec currently used by YouTube is the same codec used by newer Blu-ray Disc releases.

They need to fix the site first.

[Doug52392]

What use would HTML5 have if Google insists on streaming crystal-clear high-definition unskippable ads to me in a few seconds, but streams the video to me bit-by-bit to the point where it takes five minutes to watch a one minute HD video.

Re:They need to fix the site first.

[macs4all]

What use would HTML5 have if Google insists on streaming crystal-clear high-definition unskippable ads to me in a few seconds, but streams the video to me bit-by-bit to the point where it takes five minutes to watch a one minute HD video.

Boy, I couldn't agree more with that!

I recently switched the "Try HTML5" thing on, and I've got to say, they need to assemble and download those clips a helluva lot faster. They've made the site nearly un-fun.

To the point that I'm about ready to "un-volunteer" to be an HTML5 Guinea Pig...

I forget, but

[benjamindees]

Wasn't it John Adams who said:

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to make fart lighting and Rick-roll videos."

Re:I forget, but

[danbert8]

I believe John Adams would be happy. For John Adams studied politics and war so that we would have the freedom to do what we pleased as long as it didn't infringe on the rights of others. Since making fart lighting and rickroll videos doesn't hurt anybody (at least anybody who wasn't willing in the first place), I don't think he'd give two shits.

source?

[jDeepbeep]

The most popular apps on iphones are fart simulators

[citation needed]

Re:source?

[Anonymous Coward]

**fart**

Re:source?

[BobNET]

iphones [...] we accept that platform as important

[citation needed]

Re:Perish (reasons why flash is not supported)

[AndrewStephens]

The video sites I will give you (although if they really wanted to be on the iPhone they would just make the original h264 files available) but people bemoaning the lack of flash games on the iPhone are missing an important point - none of the existing flash games would work anyway!

The iPhone doesn't have a keyboard and (even worse) has no mouse. These two facts alone mean that the vast majority of game would not work. Even games that use the mouse purely for pointing would run into problems, since tapping with your finger is much less precise than using a mouse pointer. In addition, on the iPhone you effectively have multiple pointing devices - how would current Flash apps handle that?

For a quick demo of why sites like newsgrounds will never work on the iPhone, resize your browser window to 480*320 (or 320*480 since that is more usual) and visit your favourite gaming site. Now set your mouse pointer to a big white blob instead of an arrow to similar tapping with a large figertip. Remember to stop playing after 45 minutes to simulate the battery drain. See how much fun you have.

Re:Perish (reasons why flash is not supported)

[gad_zuki!]

It should be obvious that this is a chicken and egg problem. There arent flash apps for the iphone hosted on newgrounds BECAUSE IT DOESNT SUPPORT FLASH. Support it, and they will appear overnight with the proper navigational elements.

doing no evil

[nurb432]

When you chose what your customers will have or not have, calling them evil isn't a long stretch.

Youtube

[nurb432]

I have noticed a trend for companies to post 'tutorials' on sites like youtube to save their own bandwidth. if we did suddenly lose the free video hosting, it would be a short term pain and cost some companies a bit of extra cash.

Re:First

[jitterman]

Feeble Pulse?

The new YouTube video page

[A Friendly Troll]

I've been selected to try out the new YouTube video page. If that's forced evolution, then I don't want to be a part of it...

There are no normal links anywhere anymore. Whereas previously the video links were http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxxxxxxx, they are now monstrosities with a hundred characters in the URL.

It's all full of AJAX. I haven't tried disabling JS to see what happens... The layout has changed, it's confusing, and it's ugly. When the video you are watching stops, the next one starts automatically, as if it were all a giant playlist.

If you get that piece of garbage (which is a clear devolution, not an evolution), delete YouTube's cookies. I'm not sure which one was responsible; I just got rid of all of them and got normal YouTube back.

Re:The new YouTube video page

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll or not, you're kinda dumb. It's fine.

Re:The new YouTube video page

[/dev/trash]

Waaaaah waaaaah waaaaah I hate change. Change sucks!

Re:The new YouTube video page

[FunPika]

In other news, there should have been a link that said something like "Return to old Youtube" in the top right area of the page to switch things back.

Re:The new YouTube video page

[Culture20]

Waaaaah waaaaah waaaaah I hate change. Change sucks!

A lot of times it does. In this specific case, posting a URL to a specific youtube video will soon look like posting a URL to a location in googlemaps, and you apparently can't rewind and rewatch a clip you just saw as easily, or spend some time choosing a related clip; they force one on you.

Re:The new YouTube video page

[steelfood]

Surprise! Change isn't always a good thing. Things can change for the worse. For example, going from living to dead is a huge lifestyle change. I don't imagine many people to think it'd be for the better.

Re:The new YouTube video page

[Randle_Revar]

What are you talking about? Neither the HTML5 beta, nor the Feather beta are remotely like you describe. As rendered on-screen, the html5 version looks identical to the flash version, and the feather beta is a more minimal layout that isn't confusing at all. Neither on changes the URLs. I can't see why they would make radical test changes like that and randomly drop them on people instead of putting it in test tube.

Re:The new YouTube video page

[A Friendly Troll]

What are you talking about?

The new YouTube layout page, which will be rolled to all users soon.

I wish I had taken some screenshots... :(

Re:The new YouTube video page

[/dev/trash]

Don't be so insensitive.

sociology of small things

[epine]

While youtube is nice for idling away some downtime, it's not the internet-dominating force this article makes out.

Wow, do you ever misunderstand the calculus of adolescent outrage. Ever joined a condo association rife with government retirees? If you have a busy career, there's a lot of battles you aren't going to fight on time investment alone.

Teenagers don't have much clout in the adult world, but they do have a lot of time, they're well connected, they function as mobs, and nothing makes them yowl louder than exclusion from mob norms.

For example, in many split families, if one of the parents has YouTube and the other can't be bothered to torch IE6, guess which parent won't be seeing much of the kids, if the kids have the option about which bus to take home after school that day?

I know families which function exactly this way. Kids start to get on your nerves, wait for an incident to occur (never in short supply), then shut off the Xbox for a week, then they predictably spend the next six days out of seven staying over at Dad's place. Nice little time out. In the example I'm thinking about, Dad doesn't make the kids do homework, so eventually you have to turn the Xbox back on, to make sure the little rats don't flunk the entire school year.

I like the way Google is presently working to lock-out lock-in.

YouTube will get the outrage, not IE

[johnthuss]

On that day all browsers will be HTML5 compatible or they will perish in the flames of user outrage.

People won't blame their browser (IE) they will yell at YouTube for needlessly breaking something that was working just fine. Seriously, users don't care AT ALL about the politics behind this. They just want IE6 to keep working. Well, "working" might be a generous description, but you get the point.

Re:YouTube will get the outrage, not IE

[PenguinGuy]

too bad...if they want IE they have to upgrade. If they don't then they don't get on the web

Re:Perish (reasons why flash is not supported)

[jo_ham]

Or you can write an app for the iPhone, like Bejeweled. Play it in flash on the browser, or on the iPhone as an app.

Re:Perish (reasons why flash is not supported)

[derGoldstein]

I can't find the article now, but there were a bunch of interviews done with people working at some of the larger Flash gaming sites. It turns out that they were given "hints" from Adobe that Flash will make it into the iPhone eventually, and that they should prepare touch-interfaces using some simulation tools. I wonder how many man-hours were spent developing UIs for a device that would never support the software.

user outrage

[Khashishi]

I think more user outrage would be focused on youtube then on the browsers if this change were made.

Forcing Change

[aBaldrich]

And nobody mentioned the IE 6 ban in G-Docs... Google is moving the internet foward.

What about pr0n?

[CohibaVancouver]

Don't a lot of pr0n sites still depend on flash? I presume n00die vids are still a large percentage of web traffic?

In its current form...

[IANAAC]

I don't think HTML5 video will ever be successful, flash video/flv is very dominant.

HTML5, in its current form, won't dominate until there's a way to handle ccntent the creator(s) want to protect. Flash currently handles this.

I just can't imagine a site like Hulu serving any video in HTML5, knowing that any user is a right-click away from downloading their content. They're FAR too protective of their content.

Re:In its current form...

[Zerth]

Hulu content is protected?

Youtube Will Either Work On The Browser I Have Now

[Anonymous Coward]

or it won't, in which case I'll use something else. I don't have a ring in my nose, or rather, my computer doesn't have a ring in its nose that I will let anyone else lead it around by.

circletimessquare is an asshole

[circletimessquare]

because he doesn't use the shift key

anyway, so what do you think of google's embrace of html5?

i'm sorry, is that less important?

this world is full of mindless hate, but gee, thanks for adding more

Re:circletimessquare is an asshole

[jo_ham]

Hey, you started it with a big flamefest a few weeks ago, calling anyone who complained that you didn't even attempt to use proper grammar as beneath your contempt.

I'm amazed you even replied. My opinion on HTML5 clearly isn't important to you.

NOT TRUE

[Anonymous Coward]

This can't be true. Look at http://bit.ly/9qhqKo

Here's a secret about the Internet.. Shh

[ClosedSource]

You don't have to put your promotional videos on YouTube to make them available on the net.

Re:Here's a secret about the Internet.. Shh

[fm6]

Depends on what you mean by "available". If you just want to dump your video files on a web site, then yes, anybody can make their videos available — if "available" doesn't include people actually seeing it. And a video dumped on an ordinary web site, won't be — even if people can find it, they mostly won't have the patience to download or buffer it.

Successful online videos are the ones that go viral. For that to happen, there has to be some kind of search and web 2.0 functionality to help people find it. There also (and this is the hard part) has to be heavy-duty network infrastructure that allows the video to start streaming seconds after the user clicks on it,. That's a much more useful version of "available".

Re:Here's a secret about the Internet.. Shh

[steelfood]

"Viral" is beyond the scope of GGP's use case. GGP just wants a place to put the video so customers can access them after purchasing GGP's product. Perferably, I'm thinking GGP wants to have those videos streamed to the customer without cost to GGP.

YouTube is far from GGP's only choice, and one can argue, far from GGP's best choice.

Whistling In The Dark

[westlake]

You say it's everywhere, and that's why it has already won. It's not nearly as widespread as you seem to think. Many of us do not use Blu-Ray. Much video on the Internet is still H.263.

AVC/H.264 Licensees currently number 760.

Reading the list is, as I have said before, like watching a freight train built up speed and momentum. The geek is not going to be able to stop this thing.

Re:Perish (reasons why flash is not supported)

[MichaelSmith]

Or you can write an app for the iPhone, like Bejeweled. Play it in flash on the browser, or on the iPhone as an app.

What happened to write once, run anywhere? No money in it I suppose.

Re:Perish (reasons why flash is not supported)

[SirKveldulv]

OP is totally correct with this.

I went to newgrounds yesterday with my Nokia n97 (on wifi) to try and play vector TD. The site is way too heavy for my phone to handle, and I gave up after 10 minutes of click, wait, wait, chug chug.

I think that flash games on the mobile could definitely work, but in most cases it's going to require a change to the games, as they're just not made to work with low-end hardware and touch

Thought-provoking line from the article

[dmneoblade]

However, there was a more fundamental problem, in the minds of some internet service providers and powerful telecommunications companies. YouTube pays for the transmission of half that awesome amount of data it serves (in theory only, in practice it's less). The other half is paid by those who receive it, by way of the telephone company used to get internet access. The users may consider that fair, but the telephone companies saw the equivalent of newspapers being delivered using their vans while they see none of the advertising revenue. YouTube, and Google and Facebook and other big traffic destinations, they argued, should pay to reach those customers.

Now, think about this for a moment. If I am renting a van from you, paying what you asked for mileage, filling up the tank when I brought it back, etc... why should I give you more money for using it to deliver newspapers, than if I used it to pick up a couch and bring it back to my place?

Seriously, where the hell did they think up this analogy?

Re:First

[FatdogHaiku]

Flatulated Pants!

Re:First

[FatdogHaiku]

Fornicated Penguin. http://www.mobileimage.com/images/penguingetshot.jpg

Isn't Flash Open?

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe opened the SWF file format a while ago. Why is it still referred to as a closed format?

Well..

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to be the voice from the darkness, but, well.. a LOT of main stream sites use Flash nowadays.
Unless Google or Apple or whomever wants to take control of just about any non tech savvy site that does any sort of streaming...flash won't show up on your random pad/mobile device without Flash.

Just sayin... bitch all you want about standards and what not but the world won't change overnight - and the adopters of the simple tech 'that just works' (even if it does crash now and again), dictate mainstream usage (more a looking towards the coming 'tablet wars' then cells, but the mobile handsets are quickly coming to that theater)

Re:Perish (reasons why flash is not supported)

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe is releasing a version of Flash that will compile to an Apple-spec iPhone app.

Re:Perish (reasons why flash is not supported)

[Rocketship Underpant]

"There arent flash apps for the iphone hosted on newgrounds BECAUSE IT DOESNT SUPPORT FLASH."

But the people complaining about the lack of Flash are complaining that they can't play *existing* games, which nullifies your point. And AndrewStephens is correct in that current Flash games wouldn't work anyway because the hardware and UI paradigms are too different.

No one wants developers to make *new* Flash games for the iPhone either. We want people to make native iPhone games instead that will run faster, use the GPU, save state on exit, etc.

Re:Perish (reasons why flash is not supported)

[that this is not und]

We want people to make native iPhone games instead that will run faster, use the GPU, save state on exit, etc.

That's the ghetto mentality that Apple is famous for. Box their customers off in their own world. Then sprinkle in some "it's better this way" for good measure.

Re:Perish (reasons why flash is not supported)

[Sobrique]

And once upon a time, it was a dismal failure, as 'everyone' questioned quite why a company was trying to control them. Apples weren't bad products back then, they were just ... unpopular, because 'everyone' wanted control over their own stuff, thanks.
So it remained the preserve of the apple-fanboy, who would bleat about how Macs were the best thing ever, when more informed individuals pointed and laughed at their one button mouse, getting stomped hard whenever they tried to play an FPS, and getting burned on 'apple pricing' for equipment, because they had no choice about it.
I find it intriguing to note how the world has changed. Now it seems that the consumer market has expanded enough, that there's a steady influx of people who know no better, and do actually want to be told what they can or can't do. I'm not quite sure if that's a relection on recnet changes in society.

Re:Perish (reasons why flash is not supported)

[Anonymous Coward]

What happened to write once, run anywhere?

That still means the same as it always did: "write once, run anywhere without an Apple logo".

Apple is not about compatibility. If you want compatible, avoid the Walled Garden of Cupertino like the plague.

Re:Perish (reasons why flash is not supported)

[Anonymous Coward]

Most customers, actually almost all customers except the far ends of the spectrum, want to be handed something that they don't have to tweak. You are not in the majority, but telling you that would be as effective as talking to the wall.

Re:Perish (reasons why flash is not supported)

[Chrisje]

Well, after three years of using a Sinclair ZX-81, one year with an Acorn Electron, side dabbling with Commodore +4 and finally 22 years of using DOS/Win3/WinNT/2000/XP/95/98/Vista PC's, working on HP-UX, Sun Solaris, Linux and whatnot, I have recently switched to Mac. Likewise I have gone through Walkmans, Discmans, iRiver and iAudio MP3 players, the iPod Classic to finally end up with the iPhone 32GB 3GS.

All I can say at the end of the day is this: It *IS* better this way. ;)

Re:Perish (reasons why flash is not supported)

[CapOblivious2010]

You're right - it's those greedy corporate bastards who insist on profiting by re-writing apps over and over, when the masses would rather have one binary that works everywhere.

Wait - that doesn't make any sense at all, does it?

Re:Perish (reasons why flash is not supported)

[jasmusic]

It's a noble concept but platforms are so different that you end up rewriting a lot of client UI regardless.

Re:Perish (reasons why flash is not supported)

[el_womble]

Although the biggest criminal here is the web. Yes the standards are sloppy, but writing a decent web gui is a royal pain in the arse, it is not just IE, but it is certainly the biggest culprit.

But can I hear something?

[tepples]

That was fun, and an excellent proof of concept. But it's missing two things: sound effects and music. Videos on YouTube play sound. Games on Newgrounds play sound. Can you give me an example of a DHTML game with sound?

Is your employer hiring?

[Traegorn]

Because Youtube is totally blocked at my office, and I really want to watch a piano playing cat right now.

Re:Perish (reasons why flash is not supported)

[hazydave]

After some years of using a TI Silent 700 dialup, an Exidy Sorcerer, being on hardware design team of the Commodore +4, years of using standard hardware PCs, using HP-UX, UNIX Systems III, IV, and V, Amiga UNIX, Sun Solaris, AmigaOS, BeOS, BSD, many flavors of Linux, and also designing Macs back in 1997, I have come to the conclusion that you're an idiot to rely on any company's proprietary hardware for something as important as your computing needs, unless there is no other choice. So maybe at the very high end, no other choice. On the desktop, plenty of choices.

For music, I've gone from "Six transistor!!!" radios, home made AM receivers, a dozen boomboxen and another dozen portable CD players, MP3 CD players, half a dozen dedicated MP3 players (including an iPod), another bunch that quality as PMPs (including a Zune), and finally ended up with the Motorola DROID. This is the one device that really replaces all those little pocket boxes with LCDs attached: GPS, cheap camera, Palm T|X, cellphone, guitar tuner/chord book, PMP (with greater than SD resolution), MP3 player (with my choice of fully functional player apps, such as Museek and Pandora), web terminal (on par with the small Nokias as far the browsing experience goes), etc. No software is locked out, anything can run as a daemon or background program, multitasking works just dandy, and I still get longer battery life than iPhone users. I can download the SDK, put an app up on my web site if I like, and every Android user can use it, no hacking the system needed. And even more amazing, it even works very well as a phone.

Apple is the wrong way. It's a throwback to the 1970s/1980s, when everyone made their own proprietary computing environments. Apple's done a fine job tying up the hardware so you have to pay 2x-3x as much fo the same PC you can buy from anyone else. Now they're working hard, not on the Mac, not yet, but elsewhere, to eliminate price competition in software, and have absolute say about what you may and many not run on your purchased software.

Re:Perish (reasons why flash is not supported)

[jo_ham]

So those Windows programs that just run on Linux (without Wine) are so numerous, right?

Re:Perish (reasons why flash is not supported)

[bartoku]

To preface, I despise Flash as much as anyone, primarily for its closed nature. But I have to play devils advocate here.

You make valid points about the lack of a keyboard and mouse on the iPhone inhibiting the use of current Flash apps by iPhone users.
Your argument for resizing a web page to 320x480 is where your short sightedness is completely revealed though.

Many web sites, flash or no flash, do not display well on a 320x480 screen resolution, or rather a 3.x" screen even at the higher resolution of 480x800--but that is why most sites have adopted a mobile version of their website.
The lack of a keyboard and mouse on a non-flash web site can be just as detrimental, but again we have seen an adaptation of web sites to accommodate big blob fingers.
The Wii's built in browser and flash support motivated a whole slew of Flash games with the Wii motion controller alone in mind--no keyboard.

Now imagine that Adobe is allowed to bring Flash to the iPhone. Surly Flash programmers would adapt their apps and games to accommodate the lack of a keyboard and giant click areas--heck Adobe may even offer an API to support multi-touch.

Now I am not fan of Apple and its closed nature. While I have an iPhone and MacBook, for the purpose of creating iPhone apps, I hope for Apple's demise.
But I despise Flash even more than Apple and find it quite amusing that Google and Apple are helping to bury Flash.