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Microsoft Tips the Scale In Favor of HTML 5
aabelro writes "Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager for Internet Explorer at Microsoft, has announced that IE9 will use only the H.264 standard to play HTML 5 video. Microsoft seems to have become very committed to HTML 5, while Flash loses even more ground. The announcement came the same day Steve Jobs detailed why Apple does not accept Flash on iPhone and iPad."
2. Microsoft is part of the H.264 patent pool, so they will make money when the licensing bombs go off. Killing off a competitor (flash) so users and content providers have few alternatives and must pay up puts them right where Microsoft wants them.
Modern flash video is H.264. Microsoft gets money whether it's HTML5 H.264 or Flash H.264.
Once flash is gone (or has greatly diminished influence/relevance), Microsoft is free to tweak things in a way that suits them better. Embrace, extend, extinguish.
Supporting HTML5 now means that Microsoft will annoy even more people than usual if they attempt to push nonsense over the web again. Doesn't mean they won't, but it's not simple.
HTML5 video has no established standard DRM solution which content owners crave. Flash does, so it's hard to get content owners on board with Microsoft's agenda at present.
This is probably flash's saving grace right now.
I suspect that Microsoft has something in the works to offer them, which will conveniently be exclusive to Microsoft controlled platforms, or licensable to those who play nice (Apple).
If you're presuming that they will later announce that H.264 is not the only video format they will support (even if the alternative is H.264+DRM) then that is not unreasonable. Don't think they'd be licensing it to Apple though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The bright side is that this codec idiocy might actually get people interested in fixing software patents.
Sure, and then we'll get them interested in fixing racial, social, and economic inequality. And we'll save the whales.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"