Microsoft Slams Google Over HTML5 Video Decision

jbrodkin writes "Microsoft is accusing Google of some heavy-handed tactics in the battle over HTML5 video standards. In an attempt at humor, a clearly peeved Microsoft official wrote 'An Open Letter from the President of the United States of Google,' which likens Google's adoption of WebM instead of H.264 to an attempt to force a new language on the entire world. Internet Explorer 9, of course, supports the H.264 codec, while Google and Mozilla are backing WebM. The hyperlinks in Microsoft's blog post lead readers to data indicating that two-thirds of Web videos are using H.264, with about another 25% using Flash VP6. However, the data, from Encoding.com, was released before the launch of WebM last May. One pundit predicts the battle will lead to yet another 'years-long standards format war.'"

Comments

Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[arivanov]

Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle - you are both black.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[Anonymous Coward]

Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle - you are both black.

racist

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[Anonymous Coward]

Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle - you are both black.

I've always wondered.... what is the difference between a pot and a kettle?

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[Mikkeles]

A kettle has a spout.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[jgagnon]

A kettle usually has a handle as well.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[rjstanford]

Cook much?

A pot is generally a variant of an open cylinder, often as deep as it is wide, typically used for cooking soups, stews, and the like, with an optional lid. A kettle is typically the a dome with a wide base designed to catch a lot of heat from below relative to its volume in order to bring liquids inside (typically just water) to a boil as quickly as possible. It generally has a built-in "lid" with a small access area and a pouring spout.

Both were traditionally made from iron, hence the reference colo[u]r.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[MouseR]

FYI, this article makes it sound like MS is the only backer of H.264 and is out to lash at Google.

But H.264 is backed by MANY companies out there, including Apple, Sony, DivX amongst others.

Its a file format adopted by BlueRay, QuickTime, DiVX/XviD.

Now, if HTML5 would go ahead with H.264, think of the transcoding hours you would spare by being able to simply stream the same content a those popular sources of content.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[arivanov]

Actually the reference to colour is from the days when they were used on open fire. So regardless of the material in use they all became black over time from soot. So it implies not just black colour, but dirt as well.

The days when most of them were made from black cast iron as well as the days of clean heat from gas and electricity came later.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[Ginger Unicorn]

tip me up and pour me out

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[EdgeyEdgey]

Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle - you are both black.

I've always wondered.... what is the difference between a pot and a kettle?

Topologically a pot is 0 and a kettle is 8

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[EdgeyEdgey]

Actually, a pot could also be 1

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[Anonymous Coward]

And when its the only video standard used think of all the royalties they'll charge. Its only free for now while there is competition.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[GaryOlson]

Mathematical analogy meets cookware -- brilliant! I can't wait to see your math/food analogies.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[Anonymous Coward]

Yoyo*YO*. I am *tired* of these motherfuckin' flakes in this motherfuckin' game.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[Stooshie]

" ... I can't wait to see your math/food analogies ... "

Donut

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless it's a teapot.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[commodore64_love]

P.S. If you support "openness" why the need to censor posts? (Use modding to make them invisible.) That's not open. Or free. It's corporation. You're acting like a corporation to squash opinions you don't like.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[hitmark]

Most of big media and a whole bunch of tech companies with ties to big media backs H264, sure. But then they can afford to fork over the license fees involved as they get payed pr "unit" sold, and can recoup it from there.

Google, Mozilla and the rest give their browsers away. This means that any license fees will end up being a running expense. And with the download rates they get on their browsers, that is a whole lot of red ink.

H264 is the last in the line that started with Edison's phonograph, a mental world where there are a few big broadcasters and millions of passive "consumers". Not so with the net, as anyone that can hook a computer to the net is a potential broadcaster! And trying to get a "pr use" license out of those, especially if the pricing is in the "big broadcaster expensive" range, is just not going to happen. Until the MPEG-LA steps up and states that the H264 will be licensed for free (price and use) for as long as the patents apply, this will continue to be a issue.

This is the equivalent of the catholic church having a patent on latin, and attempting to leverage a use fee from anyone writing something in that language.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[msauve]

"A kettle has a spout."

So does a teapot. I've seen references state that a teakettle is used for heating, a teapot for serving. But then again, when I think of "pots and pans," I think of a pot used for heating.

But, clearly, the fact that there's some confusion about what the difference really is only strengthens the idiom which started this - "The pot calling the kettle black." Might as well say "'A' calling 'B' a character," then ask what the difference is between A and B.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[Whalou]

Dough or donut, there is no fry

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[calzones]

I don't know the actual etymology for the idiom, but I would guess those people talking about teapots are on the right track

The saying makes the most sense if you are talking about two items which are fundamentally the same beyond just color, and where referencing the color is a witty way of highlighting just one of their many similarities.

I can guarantee you that Kettle Chips are not cooked in a kettle with a spout. And I assume that in the days where this saying comes from, most common people did not have a dedicated teapot, but instead had something far more multipurpose. You can imagine someone thinking that having one specially styled version of the item was superior to the other, and someone else laughing it off as ridiculous. And as another poster mentioned above, they both ended up covered in soot and dented with use.

So is it referencing two vessels with handles and a spout, or is it referencing two plain, largeish vessels with sides higher than a pan for the purpose of heating and simmering liquids?

Who knows. Maybe the kicker is that it works in either example.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[Andy Dodd]

Ordinarily, I'd side against Microsoft in anything, but in this case, they're right.

They tried to do exactly what Google did (release a non-patent-encumbered video codec, VC-1) and as soon as it started becoming used, a couple of patent holders crawled out of the woodwork and asserted patents against VC-1.

I wouldn't be surprised if WebM gets patents asserted against it in 6 months to a year once it becomes widespread.

(A lot of shadier patent holders like to wait for infringement to become widespread - hence the term "submarine patent")

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[eleuthero]

Wikipedia has a great discussion on this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot_calling_the_kettle_black). In my own mind, I've always thought of a black cast iron pot (for steaming / boiling crabs, making chili, etc.) and a tea kettle also made of cast iron (they have them, usually smaller than the cheap ten dollars stainless ones that you can get at Walmart). Both are equally black.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[cptdondo]

The first thing I thought of was "Embrace, extend, extinguish."

Seems Google has learned from the master. Paybacks are hell, eh, MS?

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[zeroshade]

Except you can change your settings to view these posts of 0 or lower thus they are not invisible nor censored. You have chosen yourself that you do not want to view them and you want to ignore them. Sure you can consider it a form of "voluntary censorship" but that's not a problem. If I do not want to read something, I am not censoring the writer by choosing not to read it myself.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[pyrr]

Oh, I don't know about that. I would rather just say Microsoft, "Pot, go f--- yourself."

I keep hearing about how "evil" Google is becoming, but supporting open standards to the detriment of patent-ridden corporate rubbish is not really remotely evil. No sir, "evil" would be buying all their competitors to cement their vendor lock-in, and boosting proprietary technology that furthers only their interests, which are attempts to squeeze as much money out of consumers as possible. Google is furthering its own goals while benefiting consumers at the expense of bloated corporations and patent trolls who were salivating over squeezing more money out of everyone. As far as business models go, Google seems to have more of a symbiotic relationship with consumers, whereas Microsoft is just a crippling parasite.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[igomaniac]

No, the insanity here is that Google and Mozilla refuse to use the codecs installed in the operating system that you've already paid royalties for (if they require royalties to be paid) and that automatically take advantage of hardware acceleration and any other features the OS offers for media playback.

What Google (and Mozilla) _should_ do if they want to play nice and not just hurt their competitors is to bundle a DirectShow/Quicktime codec for WebM in their Windows/Mac version of their browser. This would also enable all other applications on the OS to play WebM so it's a win-win.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[Crudely_Indecent]

Its only free for now while there is competition.

There will always be competition.

It's only free now because they know nobody will pay for it. Think about it. If all of the sudden MPEG LA decided to start enforcing for web-usage, sites would flock to the other video standards supported by HTML5.

I think MS wants h.264 because that's the only HTML5 video standard they currently support in IE9. MONGO WANT CANDY.

The best supported format is OggTheora, where all browsers except IE and Safari have support. WebM is a close second with slightly less browser support.

I don't understand why several formats cannot be approved which would allow the market decide which format is best.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[Bert64]

And if H.264 were released as a totally royalty free standard, just like HTML, Javascript, CSS and all the other web standards then it wouldn't be a problem.

Also most of those companies don't produce web browsers... Only Apple and MS produce browsers that support H.264, Mozilla, Google and Opera produce browsers which support WebM.

The Internet has thrived because it's built on open standards, while proprietary networks attempting to compete with it have either died out or been relegated to just providing access to the real internet. The idea of a key component of the web becoming proprietary and requiring a license fee to use is the start of a very slippery slope, and it ends with any web browser or device including one being priced stupidly high because you have to pay royalties to a whole heap of companies that just sit around collecting them and not doing anything useful.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[DinDaddy]

A kettle is typically the a dome with a wide base designed to catch a lot of heat from below relative to its volume in order to bring liquids inside (typically just water) to a boil as quickly as possible. It generally has a built-in "lid" with a small access area and a pouring spout.

Then how do you get the fish out? Or do fine kettles have different architecture?

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[Lashat]

You still think Google is interested in "doing good" before making money? Have you ever worked at a start-up pre-IPO then witnessed the culture shift that comes along with being a public company?

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[Bert64]

It has traditionally been possible to both view the web and to contribute towards it by creating sites or operating a server, and all using free software. It is also possible for you to create your own software to interact with the web, either as a client or a server, and all the documentation needed for you to do so is freely available.

If H.264 starts becoming common, then that freedom is lost and it's a slippery slope...

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[gstrickler]

Actually, the license for internet video is free as long as the content is available for free, in perpetuity. There is a license fee to the supplier of the encoder/decoder, but it's small for the decoder. I have not looked at encoder royalties.

Visit MPEGLA and look in the "Media" section for the press release issued Aug 26, 2010 for more info.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[ThatsNotPudding]

pour some sugar on me
...
I may have lost the thread here.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[mobby_6kl]

Which is why they made a superior video sharing service and won over the people this way instead of buying out the biggest competitor. Oh wait.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[ccady]

>>No, the insanity here is that Google and Mozilla refuse to use the codecs installed in the operating system that you've already paid royalties for (if they require royalties to be paid) and that automatically take advantage of hardware acceleration and any other features the OS offers for media playback.

Funny, I don't recall paying anyone for my GNU/Linux operating system...

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[sirsnork]

While it's possible, go back and look at the timelines involved. On2 have had their video codecs around for a VERY long time. Personally I wouldn't be surprised if H.264 was infringing on some of the WebM patents

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[pyrr]

I'm well aware Google is not a charity that's just out for making warm, fuzzy feelings-- I think they're just one of the few companies that realizes that what's good for consumers is what's good for them, and opportunity after opportunity, they continue to take the path which leads to openness and "freedom". At any of those junctures, they could've been thinking about how to lock-in and exploit a userbase, but they didn't.

Take an example: Their world-class search and other services are 100% as functional in Firefox or IE as it is in Google Chrome. But just minutes ago, I was troubleshooting an issue where an end user was getting a blank page while trying to access a particular function on the only internal Microsoft portals in our organization, which is based around Sharepoint. I asked him to try IE, it came right up, and worked correctly. See, that's the difference between Microsoft and Google...Google doesn't inexplicably break all its products in subtle (or not so subtle) ways so you simply have to use all Google stuff to enjoy complete functionality on any Google stuff. Google develops products that are usually fairly open and universally-compatible to make great things that give you a choice, only the competition is so lopsided in almost every case that it's no contest; as a consumer, I generally want what Google provides.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[pyrr]

"Buying-out" a competitor isn't inherently evil. It's all why you bought them out and what you do with the increased dominance that determines evil. So far, little has changed for the worse with Youtube. Google hasn't leveraged it much at all in ways that would be unfavorable to consumers.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[Lashat]

Did you file a bug with the companies involved?

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[hkmwbz]

You won't be able to stream the same video file because all those video hosting services are converting even h264 videos anyway.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[TENTH SHOW JAM]

i remember the time when GIF was used as THE standard graphic format on the web. It had alpha channels, multi frame and was lossless. The only down side was you only got 256 colours. Everybody was happy with the situation. Right up to the point where the owner of the GIF patents started suing people. Within 6 months, there was very little GIF left on the internet and everybody was using PNG.

I can foresee a future similar to this for H.264. The holders of the standard will need to capitalise due to angry shareholders (Possibly for releasing a dud of an operating system for mobile phones). They will start suing people who are not using the standard the way the licence allows. In 6 months, everybody will be using another standard. Probably WebM or Ogg Theora.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[BitZtream]

Google, Mozilla and the rest give their browsers away. This means that any license fees will end up being a running expense

Uhm, they are already running an expense by developing this software and giving it away for free.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[Anonymous Coward]

H.264 IS an open standard.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[Anonymous Coward]

Symbiotic is exactly right.

Microsoft sells software to people and businesses.
Google sells people to advertising businesses.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[Bert64]

But it's not royalty free (like all the other web standards), thus making it unusable in free software...

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[Anonymous Coward]

MS could also just go ahead and and bundle WebM into their OS and browser after all it is open source and wouldn't cost them a thing but then they couldn't pay any money from it. Its free. Do you work for MS?

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[camperslo]

And even when it IS bundled with the operating system it isn't licensed for commercial uses.

Re:Kettle, meet pot, pot, meet kettle

[hitmark]

a one time development cost, spread out over millions and millions of downloads. That comes perhaps down to $1 pr download, or even smaller once the base code is in place and only refinements are worked on.

Compare that to having to say say $10 each download, for as long as the H264 license terms have any weight.

That is the crazy thing about software (or anything in digital form, really). The development of the original version may have a large up front cost (tho with Chrome and Firefox that is distributed over a couple of people putting in a full time job, and a large collection of people pitching in spare time as available). But once that is done, the cost to make a N+1 copy is X zeros behind the decimal point and dropping. Yet various legal entities wants to apply a price on the N+1 as if it was a real world chair, fork or flower.

The basic "problem" (at least for economists and MBAs) is that classical economics only concerns itself with scarcity. The digital world is one of limitless abundance. End result, the people in charge have basically zero idea about what is going on. That has them worried, and attempting to pass all kinds of laws and such to attempt to force the digital world to behave as a scarce world that they can fit within their existing concepts. "The science of money", bah humbug. That kind of behavior is more in line with religion then science!

It's not illegal

[bemenaker]

when Microsoft does it!!

Re:It's not illegal

[Gadget_Guy]

The difference is that when Microsoft does it, they get condemned for doing so - and quite rightly. So it seems reasonable that Google should also get similar condemnation. It is not a valid defense to just point the finger back at Microsoft just because they have done similar things in the past.

However, the royalties problem does make it difficult for open source browsers. The best solution would be for all browsers to implement WebM as a base. It wouldn't cost much to do without any royalties to be paid. On the other hand, it is easier to support H.264 on low end systems like the iPhone and Windows Phone 7, so I can understand why there might be resistance to that idea.

Re:It's not illegal

[Dan Ost]

H.264 might be easier to support on phones right now, but there's no reason that in the future such devices couldn't have hardware support for WebM.

Google didn't make their decision base on how easy things were right now. They have a long-term vision that they're trying to create.

Re:It's not illegal

[lxnyce]

I guess they forgot about introducing DirectX when OpenGL was the prevalent technology.

Re:It's not illegal

[Bert64]

Google should not get any condemnation whatsoever, they are promoting an open standard at the expense of a proprietary one...
Would you condemn Sun for promoting the ODF format via OpenOffice?

Google may have created WebM, but they have released full documentation and code under liberal enough terms, since when have MS done anything like this? Where a standard came from isn't important, how open the standard is, that's what matters.

Re:It's not illegal

[Gadget_Guy]

There were plenty of people who cried foul over Microsoft's Office Open XML format.

Re:It's not illegal

[hkmwbz]

And rightly so. The whole thing was a mess, and Microsoft was basically trying its Embrace, Extend crap again.

Re:It's not illegal

[Gadget_Guy]

And what exactly was it trying to embrace and extend? The format originated at Microsoft, so there was nothing which they could embrace in this case.

Re:It's not illegal

[Bert64]

The fact it originated at MS was not the problem...

It was bloated and incomplete... There was already an existing fully open standard they could have contributed towards instead of making their own (OASIS invited them to join the ODF board on more than one occasion). They forced their format through ISO using plenty of well documented questionable tactics.

Google have done nothing of the sort, their format is effectively a newer version of the codec ogg theora was based on, the documentation is clearly complete enough to be useful and they have provided reference code under terms open enough that most developers wether they're commercial or open should be able to use it.

I think WebM should become part of the HTML5 spec as the standard video codec, and if there's anything better which is also open by the time HTML6 comes along it could easily be superceded.

There is no reason other than greed for any browser maker not to support WebM. Having such support would require very little work, and could reuse the existing google supplied code because its license is liberal enough. Having WebM support would also only benefit the end users (ie customers) of the browser, there is no downside from a customer perspective.
The only reason Apple and MS choose not to support it is because they want to make money from h.264, to the detriment of their customers.

Re:It's not illegal

[buchner.johannes]

Google forcing people to use WebM instead of H.264 is truly bad news, that's like as if Microsoft came up with something to replace Flash!

Re:It's not illegal

[DJRumpy]

Of course there is. There is little doubt that WebM infringes on MPEG-LA's patents. It would be nearly impossible for it not to, meaning any it is a risk to invest heavily in a technology that may have patent risk in 6 months.

Stating there is no reason they shouldn't support WebM is stretching it a bit. If history teaches anything, then VC-1 is a good example of that.

Re:It's not illegal

[DJRumpy]

H.264 is an open standard. It is not proprietary. It is also not royalty free. There is a difference.

Re:It's not illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Presumably you can direct us to the infringed patents and give us the details of when the patents were validated by the courts.

In the absence of that, I'm going to assume that the differences between WebM and H.264 exist for the purpose of circumventing patents that Google felt couldn't be invalidated if taken to court.

I await your evidence to the contrary.

competition

[roman_mir]

"Competition, motherfucker, have you heard of it?"

So what is the problem? This clearly is an interesting experiment in competition, which will have more support? Google pushing WebM with Youtube and Google Video and Chrome and other browsers, or MS with H.264 and IE?

Re:competition

[cpu6502]

I like the MPEG group.
  - They've done a lot of good work these last 25 years (MPEG1, MPEG2, MP3, JPEG, MPEG4, AAC, HE-AAC), and I don't see any reason to stop using their specifications. I especially love those most-recent specs which let me send video to my friend who's stuck on dialup, or listen to FM-quality radio at only 14kbit/s. As for microsoft or google, I could care less.

Re:competition

[i_ate_god]

and Apple with safari?

Re:competition

[Anonymous Coward]

IE isn't pushing any specific format. IE9 will support h.264 out of the box but will also play other formats if codecs are installed. IE9 will support WebM just fine. It's not like a browser has to pick a format and that's it; Chrome can perfectly well include support for WebM out of the box as well as h.264, as is the situation today. Or they could remove built-in h.264 and support installed codecs. The problem is that you have entities that are deciding to snub platform-provided methods for playing media in favor of political posturing in their own attempt to "fix the web". In the end we're going to end up with fragmentation and it is the end user who will lose.

Re:competition

[kestasjk]

"Competition, motherfucker, have you heard of it?"

So what is the problem? This clearly is an interesting experiment in competition, which will have more support? Google pushing WebM with Youtube and Google Video and Chrome and other browsers, or MS with H.264 and IE?

Competition in standards isn't such a great thing. If you're going to release a new standard it should be for a very good reason, because everyone will have to support all standards (unless they totally fail, in which case they're just a waste of time).

I know H.264 has some sort of proprietary ties, but they're pretty weak, and introducing something completely new (instead of, say, enhancing and throwing their weight behind Ogg/Vorbis, which in itself would be somewhat irresponsible if less so) seems really crazy.

Re:competition

[Lumpy]

Good for you! Can you please pay the Licensing fees then for everyone?

I am certian that if you give Google a few Million they will see it your way.

Re:competition

[ThunderBird89]

I think we all know the answer to that. Youtube, Firefox and Google Video VS. MSIE, the probably most hated browser?

Re:competition

[DarkOx]

Standards are no good when there are barriers that prevent some folks from implementing them. Standards should be open if they are not then I am fine with competition in standards even when that means things don't just work.

Re:competition

[cpu6502]

P.S.

I just don't see any compelling reason to switch to a new codec when everything I own already uses MPEG4's H264. It makes as little sense to me as deciding to move from MP3 to Snogg Vorbis. I'd rather just stick with the current standard.

Oh and yes Firefox, Opera, et cetera support MPEG4 video, via the Flash support.

Re:competition

[MoonBuggy]

...introducing something completely new (instead of, say, enhancing and throwing their weight behind Ogg/Vorbis, which in itself would be somewhat irresponsible if less so) seems really crazy.

I pretty much agree with the rest of your post, but it's perhaps worth pointing out that WebM actually does use Vorbis audio and a Matroska container. I hadn't previously heard of the VP8 video codec, but Google apparently placed all the patents in the public domain, open sourced their implementation, and licensed the specification under Creative Commons.

In light of all that, I'm inclined to support it over H.264, despite the fact I hadn't actually heard of it before I saw this article.

Re:competition

[_xeno_]

I know H.264 has some sort of proprietary ties, but they're pretty weak, and introducing something completely new (instead of, say, enhancing and throwing their weight behind Ogg/Vorbis, which in itself would be somewhat irresponsible if less so) seems really crazy.

My understanding is that its patents that sink H.264 on the "open" front. Specifically the lack of open licensing terms.

Of course, my understanding is that Theora and VP8 infringe on a subset of the H.264 patents anyway, although no one is entirely sure which ones and no one really wants to go looking.

Incidentally, WebM uses Vorbis for its audio, so in a way, Google is backing Vorbis. Just not Ogg, instead they've invented a new container format that I think is either Matryoshka directly or a modified version of it.

Re:competition

[cpu6502]

"Competition in standards isn't such a great thing."

That's true. Look at the mess that was AM Stereo - there were three competing standards in the US, and the consumers were left confused. Eventually AM Stereo died out since consumers were afraid of picking the wrong standard (as happened with Betamax and HDdvd) and being left with a junk radio. ----- Meanwhile in other parts of the world AM Stereo became very successful because their Governments chose ONE standard, and consumers quickly adopted it.

Re:competition

[TheRaven64]

MPEG4/H264 will soon be an open standard too. ,/quote> Are you a sock puppet for commodore64_love? The H.264 patents expire during 2023. That is not soon, that is in over 12 years. 12 years ago, we were all thinking RealVideo or MPEG-1 were the state of the art for web video. If we're still using H.264 online in 12 years, I shall be quite disappointed.

Re:competition

[Kjella]

BESIDES the licensing fees will disappear very soon. MPEG1/2/JPEG are already public domain if I recall correctly, and MPEG4/H264 will soon be an open standard too

MPEG1? Check.
MPEG2? *bzzzzzzzzt* 2023.
JPEG? Yep, was never patented to begin with.
H.264 soon? Well, if 2027 is soon.

And you didn't mention MP3, but that is 2012/2017 depending if you think the submarine patents are valid or not.

Re:competition

[cpu6502]

Standards are no good when there are barriers that prevent some folks from implementing them

A barrier that is self-imposed is not a barrier. Refusal by Google & Opera to pay MPEG's 10 cent/browser license fee is equivalent to me saying, "I am barred from watching SyFy Channel, because I have to pay the $60 fee to access it." - That is not a barrier; that is a self-inflicted wound because I'm a cheapass.

Re:competition

[rjstanford]

If they wanted to be bizarre, they could even support their internal codecs for things they provide, and fall back to platform codecs for everything else. The only reason for Chrome to refuse to play H.264 video is a political one.

So much for net neutrality, eh?

Re:competition

[jgagnon]

If your "iGadgets" can't be updated with software to support new codecs or variations in existing codecs, then I fear you have already wasted your money on crappy technology.

Re:competition

[rjstanford]

And they're so confident that WebM is now patent-unencumberd that they're willing to stake their own money on it.

Oh, wait - no, they're not, are they? They won't contribute to any sort of a defense fund for those folks who want to use WebM in case they're sued in the future. Not so confident after all. And considering how much like flipping a switch it was for the encoder/decoder guys to add WebM support to H.264 products, the odds of it not actually violating H.264 patents are very small indeed.

Re:competition

[jgagnon]

Netflix will also be a big player in how this all plays out.

Re:competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you a sock puppet for commodore64_love?

Commodore fanboyism on first day: check.
Commodore fanboyism in new account name? Check.
Small blizzard of flamebait starting 20 minutes after last post by commodore64_love, written in oddly similar style? Check..
Your hunch appears to be correct. :-)

Re:competition

[kevinmenzel]

Sadly, they are often the best choice in a balance between audio quality (pretty bad across the board), capacity (sadly, not many large portable devices available), and user interface (buttons vs. touch screen). - In other words, I may have two iPod Classics - but only because they're the best of the worst. And I have absolutely no faith that Apple will update either of them, because my Classic 6G still has problems playing back audio - problems that were fixed in the 6.5G firmwares - in software, not hardware. So yeah. Some of us have crappy devices that were pragmatically purchased and just happen to be iDevices. :)

Re:competition

[Randle_Revar]

>I know H.264 has some sort of proprietary ties, but they're pretty weak

Weak is not the word I would use to describe the MPEG-LA.

1135 patents from 26 companies in 44 countries does not sound very weak either.

Re:competition

[jrumney]

Meanwhile in other parts of the world AM Stereo became very successful

Which parts of the world would that be?

Re:competition

[commodore64_love]

You can't afford the MPEG's 20-30 cents extra per iPod? That is a shame. Well *I* can't afford to spend several hundred dollars to buy new iPods, iPads, and other Gadgets that can play the WebM codec. I think MY reason is more compelling then your reason. Hundreds of dollars >>>>> 0.1 dollars. I side with me.

Re:competition

[Randle_Revar]

The WebM container is a strict subset of Matroska. Most FOSS container handling software had explicit support for it like a week after it was announced (and could probably have handled it anyway, as MKV).

Re:competition

[Anonymous Coward]

1. What is there total number of downloads? If it's 20M and your claim of $.10 per browser, that's $2M bucks... Whereas you could take the $2M bucks and develop a new unencumbered codex. Your choice...
2. How about open source? Is it better for people to spend resources reverse engineering a codex or to just grab a copy of a BSD license codex?
3. You jump on Google for muddying the waters (but like people have said, H.264 can just be an add-on codex if needed); but, in maybe a year, when the encumbered codex is gone, replaced by an open codex, will you be praising Google for their effort?

Re:competition

[John Betonschaar]

You don't get it. Video decoding hardware is very specific in what parts of what codecs it supports, and it can't be upgraded through software. The x264 devs already determined that WebM contains algorithms that don't translate well to efficient hardware, and that it will be a huge resource hog compared to current h264 solutions, until dedicated WebM hardware is released to the market.

As for the whole licensing discussion: I think everyone should pull their head out of their asses and stop spreading the H264 licensing and royalty FUD. The H264 patent pool serves only a single purpose, which is licensing H264 for use in commercial products and services. The terms are very clear, only if you make more than x amount of money (somewhere in the neighbourhood of a few hundred thousand dollars) you have to pay a very reasonable royalty fee as a compensation for using the work done by the MPEG group and ITU. I don't see what's wrong with that.

The only arguments against H264 that people can come up with are irrational, and hypothetical, and none of them make any sense at all. What if MPEG-LA reverses their decision and asks everyone to pay up for watchin youtube? What if MPEG-LA challenges open-source codecs in court to crush them? What if the lock the specifications and extort everyone hosting an H264 to pay up? None of these make sense unless you think MPEG-LA are codec fascists who are only out to screw everyone, instead of just trying to make money off a very advanced piece of technology that is widely regarded as the best you can get for video coding.

Does the fact that x264 negotiated a licensin scheme with MPEG-LA for 100% legal distribution of x264 for commerical purposes make any sens if they want to extort non-profit use? MPEG-LA is effectively taking x264 licensees now, or in other words: they make money off the commercial use of an open-source codec that's freely available for non-profit use.

Re:competition

[slim]

A barrier that is self-imposed is not a barrier. Refusal by Google & Opera to pay MPEG's 10 cent/browser license fee is equivalent to me saying, "I am barred from watching SyFy Channel, because I have to pay the $60 fee to access it." - That is not a barrier; that is a self-inflicted wound because I'm a cheapass.

Of course SyFy's subscription fee is a barrier. But it doesn't really matter if there are SyFy haves and have-nots.

And of course MPEG's 10c fee is a barrier -- as is their higher fee for encoding.

Now, these fees might seem very cheap to you -- but they'll be a significant barrier to the developing world, and we'll end up with internet video haves and have-nots, which is exactly what Mozilla's mission it is to avoid.

Re:competition

[Sloppy]

Refusal by Google & Opera to pay MPEG's 10 cent/browser license fee is equivalent to me saying, "I am barred from watching SyFy Channel, because I have to pay the $60 fee to access it."

I think this bad analogy pretty clearly illustrates what the unwitting proprietary stooges don't understand. Refusal by software makers to pay licensing fees or agree to other terms in order to get permission to implement something, is equivalent to you saying, "Since people have to pay the $60 fee to do business with a single source, requiring the people to watch SyFy in order to get tax instructions isn't appropriate."

The problem isn't that you're barred from SyFy. The problem is that neutral entities shouldn't be making you do business with SyFy instead of letting you choose who to do business with, from all the choices that arise in a free market. A "standard" with licensing dependencies is like a government endorsing -- no wait, requiring -- a particular company.

You are allowed to implement WebM. You're allowed to implement Theora. You have to get on your knees and beg permission (and pay) to implement H.264. That (not just the money itself) is what makes H.264 inappropriate.

Think about all the non-proprietary stuff that browsers do, and what it would have been like if people hadn't been allowed to do all that stuff back in the 1990s. Now you want this one little part of the browser, to have a stranglehold? What's so special about video that we put up new barriers that we're used to not having, pretty much everywhere else?

Re:competition

[xaxa]

I bought some Sennheiser earphones to replace the ones bundled with my HTC Desire. I was very disappointed to hear a hissing noise when I plugged them in and opened the media player. I was more disappointed when a web search showed this was a general problem with the device.

The earphones are so sensitive that they're plenty loud enough on 10% volume (the minimum). If you have some that are similar, have you noticed the same problem with an iPhone? (Assuming your hearing is good enough that you would notice).

Re:competition

[andydread]

That is good for you. But obviously you are not creating commercial content. Or any content that is on an ad supported web page that is legally encoded in h264. Take a look at the MPEG license included with any camcorder or codec or sofware (Final Cut Pro) and you will see that its for NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY and any content you create for any commercial reason requires you to get an additional license for MPEG-LA to distribute that said content. With WebM that is not the case and I for one will not be producing commercial content in h264. The law is the law and if you use that algorithm you must pay for a license or use it illegally so I will use WebM legally and royalty-free for commercial and ad supported content. Thank you very much Google.

Re:competition

[GaryOlson]

Microsoft has been told they cannot beat up the children on the Internet playground anymore. Instead, since Google doesn't want to play Microsoft's game, MS tells all the other kids that the Googlites are weird, wear their underwear backwards, and aren't smart enough to play a real game.

Re:competition

[somersault]

My iRiver 120 was way better than the iPods available at the time (maybe 1st or 2nd gen?). I recently bought a 2nd hand iPod though, just so that I could connect it into iPod aware accessories.. car stereo, portable speakers, even the treadmills at the gym have iPod connectors so you can watch movies on the treadmill screen. They won't work with any other media player though. Bleh.

I wish everyone would get on board with some media-streaming-over-USB standard.

Re:competition

[natehoy]

Ten cents a browser sounds really cheap, until you do the math and count the number of downloads each browser has. For example, Firefox 3.6 has had nearly 400 million downloads since January 2010 ( http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/stats/ ). That's nearly $40 million a year to include a third party's software to support a single feature in a product they're giving away for free. I'd rather see that money go into stabilization of the codebase, new features, etc.

I'd actually prefer they went the platform codec route. Setup is a little more complicated, but there's no licensing fee for personal use of MPEG-LA formats ( http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=1977899 ), and if I need a license for non-free media I should just get one for my computer rather than depending on each and every one of my web browser companies to provide one to me.

Yes, on a micro scale it seems silly to "cheap out" by not dropping a dime on each of your users to give them a standard video experience. But when there's a free one available, why not push that? WebM is completely free for anyone to implement and use as they see fit.

PS: Your analogy doesn't quite hold. Try "I'm to cheap to recommend SyFy shows to friends, because for each show a friend decides to watch, I have to pay SyFy a ten cent referral fee."

Re:competition

[commodore64_love]

>>>I think everyone should pull their head out of their asses and stop spreading the H264 licensing and royalty FUD..... only if you make more than x amount of money (somewhere in the neighbourhood of a few hundred thousand dollars) you have to pay a very reasonable royalty fee..... The only arguments against H264 that people can come up with are irrational, and hypothetical, and none of them make any sense at all..... unless you think MPEG-LA are codec fascists who are only out to screw everyone..... [MPEG 4 h264] is an open-source codec that's freely available for non-profit use.
>>>

I want to hug you. FINALLY someone on slashdot displays some THINKING ability instead of trying to worship OSS as if it was a religion (and censor those who refuse to join said church). THANK YOU for finally postng a rational arguement, but sadly you'll probably be modded "troll" in order to shut you up.

Re:competition

[jgagnon]

You don't get it. Video decoding hardware is very specific in what parts of what codecs it supports, and it can't be upgraded through software. The x264 devs already determined that WebM contains algorithms that don't translate well to efficient hardware, and that it will be a huge resource hog compared to current h264 solutions, until dedicated WebM hardware is released to the market.

Oh, I get it. This is a very similar situation to the earlier days of video cards that supported "Windows acceleration" instead of more generic graphical acceleration. Software is fluid and has been since the dawn of computers. Device makers have lots of options to allow them to accelerate H.264 content without some artificial lockout of other technology, especially when that technology has been around for MANY years.

WebM is based on technology that predates H.264 by years (VP3.2 was the first open version, on which VP8/WebM are based, from 2001, versus 2003 for H.264). This is not "new" in any sense of the word I am familiar with.

Re:competition

[dr.newton]

The idea that this has anything to do with Net Neutrality is ridiculous.

A browser not supporting a codec has no impact on your ability to retrieve a video encoded with that codec.

I may as well claim that Adobe is undermining Net Neutrality because I can't edit Photoshop files I downloaded from the internet without buying their software.

Re:competition

[mcgrew]

I just don't see any compelling reason to switch to a new codec when everything I own already uses MPEG4's H264. It makes as little sense to me as deciding to move from MP3 to Snogg Vorbis

"Snogg" Vorbis? Harumph... I love it when someone without wit tries to be witty. As to the reason to switch,

Licensing and patent issues!

Many organizations have claimed ownership of patents related to MP3 decoding or encoding. These claims have led to a number of legal threats and actions from a variety of sources, resulting in uncertainty about which patents must be licensed in order to create MP3 products without committing patent infringement in countries that allow software patents.

The various MP3-related patents expire on dates ranging from 2007 to 2017 in the U.S.[51] The initial near-complete MPEG-1 standard (parts 1, 2 and 3) was publicly available in December 6, 1991 as ISO CD 11172.[52][53] In the United States, patents cannot claim inventions that were already publicly disclosed more than a year prior to the filing date, but for patents filed prior to June 8, 1995, submarine patents made it possible to extend the effective lifetime of a patent through application extensions. Patents filed for anything disclosed in ISO CD 11172 a year or more after its publication are questionable; if only the known MP3 patents filed by December 1992 are considered, then MP3 decoding may be patent free in the US by December 2012.[54]

Technicolor (formerly called Thomson Consumer Electronics) claims to control MP3 licensing of the Layer 3 patents in many countries, including the United States, Japan, Canada and EU countries.[55] Technicolor has been actively enforcing these patents.[56]

MP3 license revenues generated about €100 million for the Fraunhofer Society in 2005.[57]

That seems to me an excellent reason to switch from ANYTHING that group does, especially if you're publishing.

Oh and yes Firefox, Opera, et cetera support MPEG4 video, via the Flash support

Flash is a horrible, insecure mess. Better than Silverlight, but still bad. Both should be avoided whenever possible. OTOH,

WebM is a multimedia container format designed to provide a royalty-free, high-quality open video compression format for use with HTML5 video. The project's development is sponsored by Google.

A WebM file consists of VP8 video and Vorbis audio streams, in a container based on a profile of Matroska.[3][4][5] The project releases WebM related software under a BSD license and all users are granted a worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free patent license.

Look, if you're a Windows fan running Win 7 on your Sony computer, that's fine with me, but I want standards to be not only standard, but free and unencumbered. Your consumerist stance is antithetical to the nerd mindset. We build shit, invent shit, construct shit, come up with new ways to use shit. Proprietary "standards" are a great hindrance to true nerds.

ASIMOV'S Opinion Piece - Internet Giving Kids Higher IQ: http://www.asimovs.com/2011_01/onthenet.shtml

Asimov's been dead for almost twenty years. Why use his name for an opinion piece expressing someone else's opinion? I sincerely doubt Dr. Asimov would agree with it were he still alive. BTW, here's how to make that into a link:

<a href="http://www.asimovs.com/2011_01/onthenet.shtml">ASIMOV'S Opinion Piece - Internet Giving Kids Higher IQ:

(You don't need the closing tag </a> in a sig unless something not in the link follows.)

Re:competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Or it would be like a person in Burundi saying "I am barred from watching SyFy Channel, because I have to pay the $1000 fee to access it."

The point is there shouldn't be any kind of barrier against implementing an international standard.

Re:competition

[icebraining]

What does that have absolutely anything to do with net neutrality?

Re:competition

[dr.newton]

So it's not enough for you that one codec is definitely encumbered with patents and that the owner of these patents is highly litigious, while the owner of the other codec has placed all patents they hold relevant to the codec explicitly in the public domain. You demand that the latter group also provide legal protection for you?

Do you get legal protection against patents for all the software you use?

It's incorrect to say that WebM is equally dangerous to use from a patent litigation point of view. Is it 100% risk free? No. But what non-trivial piece of software is, when a static image file format has resulted in royalties being collected under threat of litigation?

Re:competition

[rjstanford]

It was intended as a more generic comment, but taking it more seriously...

When a browser manufacturer (Google) who owns the most popular video source (YouTube) talks about changing both to move away from existing standards, and actively removes functionality used to view videos served in the most popular video codec on the web, I think that does impact neutrality, don't you? Especially when their "solution" is for everyone to reencode their videos in a codec that - surprise - is also owned by Google.

So now one company owns the player, the distribution mechanism, the codec, and the video search that reveals the content, all while saying its doing so "to be open.". What could possibly go wrong?

Re:competition

[Draek]

Thankfully, I am certain they wouldn't. Google can certainly afford to pay MPEG LA's fees for themselves, if they're doing this its to protect their users because they know that if they had to pay to publish or browse videos on YouTube the website would die faster than a heartbeat, and that the only thing keeping MPEG LA's fees away so far is the fact that WebM is providing a strong, Free alternative to it.

Re:competition

[CowboyBob500]

I live in the EU and there are no such restrictions for H.264 use here - for example see VLCs position in their FAQ (they're based in France). The fact that over in the US you have to pay is no concern of mine or most other people in the world. Hear that sound? It's the sound of the world's smallest violin playing.

Re:competition

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just a case of one troll recognizing another. They're both equally annoying.

Re:competition

[dr.newton]

Who is censoring posts?

A group of people disagreeing with you is not censorship. The fact that I still (unfortunately) see your posts is proof that no matter how stupid the things you say are, some people on Slashdot will still be forced to read them.

But I suppose I can understand your frustration. You must get modded into oblivion quite often.

Re:competition

[eleuthero]

I haven't had any hissing ... with this said, I have trouble with certain songs (I have to go into iTunes and lower volume specs for the MP3 and then re-sync the phone) being too loud even on the lowest volume setting (similar, perhaps to your using the minimum volume setting).

Does the noise continue if you pull the jack out a bit or jig it to one side and hold it there?

Re:competition

[dr.newton]

It's the "net" part of Net Neutrality that makes it irrelevant to this. This is the older and more well-known problem of companies forcing incompatibility to achieve one of their goals when it's not in the interest of the masses. You waved the wrong flag. Try "Freedom" next time.

Also, your assertion that Google is in control of every aspect of this are completely false:

The player is a codec, and Google has open-sourced it, placed all the patents they own that pertain to it in the public domain, and promised never to sue anyone for using it however they want. So they do not "own" the player.

The distribution mechanism is the web. Google is a big fish in that particular pond, but they do not "own" it, and any attempts to exert control using their influence will be seen as a fault in the network, and they will be routed around.

The codec, as has been discussed, is the player.

As for the video search that reveals the content: Google is only one option among at least two acceptable options, and to suggest that they would tamper with their search results to promote WebM over h.264 is ludicrous. They would lose market share faster than the GIF file format.

I may agree with your apparent wish that Google would just support h.264, but your opinions on this matter are not well thought-out. I suggest you stop posting on this article.

Re:competition

[dr.newton]

You can't be "censored" by the masses, no matter what your persecution complex is telling you.

Re:competition

[mcgrew]

I know H.264 has some sort of proprietary ties, but they're pretty weak, and introducing something completely new (instead of, say, enhancing and throwing their weight behind Ogg/Vorbis, which in itself would be somewhat irresponsible if less so) seems really crazy.

Look here, the proprietary ties are NOT weak in the least. And WebM is based on Ogg Vorbis.

Re:competition

[tuppe666]

LOL this choice was made for Chrome,Opera and Firefox the cutting edge browsers for financial reasons. Nothing to do with religion.

Re:competition

[calzones]

I think the problem is that we have conflated the need for compression algorithms with the ability to share files with each other.

I think for the good of humanity, by law, all files should be able to be open and viewed "free of charge." -- as in a software or hardware producer need not pay licensing fees ever for the privledge of opening a file using any other technology.

Similarly, all tools used to compress files can be paid for by the software producer (like Final Cut or what have you) and passed on to the creative business consumer in the price of the software and hardware needed to perform the encoding and other things. Once paid, however, no author of creative content should be required to ever pay license fees for use of those tools, whether their content is free or not.

This simplifies the whole process and makes everything free and open, while still allowing enterprising folk to come up with better and better compression algorithms and get paid for doing so if they charge a fair market rate. It also means no one ever need fear getting locked into any particular format since all formats are free to decode.

Re:competition

[Candid88]

"A group of people disagreeing with you is not censorship."

Yes it is. At their choice, I cannot see that comment. That's censorship. Sure you can change settings and get around it to view the comment, but that's usually the case with any censorship.

Re:competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Said it before, and I'll say it again. Freedom of speech goes both ways. You are free to troll, and we are free to tell others that you are a troll. If you do not like it then you really need to learn how to not troll.

Thank you for proving once more that you only support free speech that you approve of, hypocrite.

Re:competition

[dr.newton]

A controlling body preventing another group of people from seeing selected content is censorship.

When the controlling body and the group of people are one and the same, it is not censorship. So censorship is not what's going on on Slashdot.

Please mod this and parent Offtopic; I fear our nerdly pendantry has led us far astray of the original discussion.

Re:competition

[Bengie]

That's what you get for early adoption of a dying tech.

j/k.. sorry, just had to.

Re:competition

[zeroshade]

The terms are very clear, only if you make more than x amount of money (somewhere in the neighbourhood of a few hundred thousand dollars) you have to pay a very reasonable royalty fee as a compensation for using the work done by the MPEG group and ITU. I don't see what's wrong with that.

You're only talking about products that were encoded with h.264. The actual encoders and decoders are NOT free for non-commercial use. If Firefox or Opera included H.264 support in their browser they would have royalty fees at around $6.5 million due to the number of downloads they get (it goes by units shipped, not by income). Therefore it is not feasible for Firefox or Opera to include it for financial reasons. As for Google, aside from this move saving them quite a bit of money by not having to pay for a license for their free browser, they are supporting a royalty free codec, that happens to be one they purchased and continue to develop. It's also an open codec with the specifications posted.

For H.264 to develop an encoder or decoder you must pay to distribute it once you pass 100,000 units (downloads). For WebM there is no royalty no matter what. Hmm.....who's spreading FUD?

Re:competition

[zeroshade]

Theora has been "claimed" to be infringing on H.264 patents for years and to date no one has found a single one, filed a lawsuit, or otherwise successfully proved the claim. I, for one, don't think they ever will.

Re:competition

[Anonymous Coward]

ummm, maybe because their legal already vetted it so they are confident they don't have issues?

Maybe they aren't M$ who just shoots from the hip and crosses their fingers that it doesn't infringe.

Re:competition

[KingMotley]

Google has already paid for their license, so every additional program (Chrome) for them is free. (Free) * (all 1,000 users of chrome) = (Still Free).

Google is essentially saying so that they can save themselves the $.10 license fee, that I should have to replace my video cards ($550 + $220), my bluray player ($200), and my cellphone ($500 - including early termination fee). Sorry, but I think I know what side of the fence I'm sitting on. Greedy bastards.

Re:competition

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm seeing a pattern.

Windows isn't pushing any specific browser. Windows will support IE out of the box but will also play other browsers if software is installed. Windows will support other browsers just fine. It's not like an OS has to pick a browser and that's it; Other OSes can perfectly well include support for other browsers out of the box as well as h.264, as is the situation today. Or they could remove IE and support installed browsers.

You can also replace Windows, IE etc. with the more recent Windows, Media Player & other media players.

Re:competition

[KingMotley]

Except you SHOULD know that h.264 decoding is done in hardware, while there currently isn't any cell phone able to decode WebM in hardware that I am aware of (I'm sure someone will point out one somewhere that noone has ever heard of) and that includes Google's own Nexus phone that WAS JUST RELEASED THIS MONTH. Decoding video in software (vs using the dedicated hardware to do it) will cause your portable device to eat through it's battery in a matter of a few hours if that. Sorry, but I like my cell phone/tablet/music device to sort of last me 10-12 hours on a single charge.

Re:competition

[KingMotley]

WebM is based on technology that predates H.264 by years (VP3.2 was the first open version, on which VP8/WebM are based, from 2001, versus 2003 for H.264). This is not "new" in any sense of the word I am familiar with.

And it sucked even worse back then.

Re:competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad they got it completely and unequivocally wrong. Or did I miss when Google, Mozilla, Opera, et al became "non profits"?

Re:competition

[KingMotley]

1. Fail. There is a maximum license cap, and google has already exceeded that cap with youtube alone. The additional cost for Chrome is $0.00.
2. Fail. H.264 has open source codecs as well. See: x264.
3. Fail. I will not be replacing my video cards, my bluray player, my cell phone, and my entire bluray library in the next 12 months, so the codec will not "be gone" in the next year. Perhaps in 7 years, but definately not before then.

Re:competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering how they made the mistake of telling everyone about their last sock puppet, I guess they needed to create a new one.

Re:competition

[shentino]

Getting everyone on one standard that submarine patenteers can then pounce on is not in everyone's best interests.

The way things are going, competition is good. No one standard should be one to rule them all...and in the darkness bind them once the opportunity is ripe to launch a patent nuke.

Re:competition

[Bert64]

How about having to pay 20-30 cents per copy of linux (thats an infinite price increase in many cases)...
And if you start there, where does it stop? A few years from now you might have to license so much proprietary crap that free software simply ceases to exist.

Re:competition

[harmonise]

I could care less about WebM or Orbis or other codecs my iGadgets can't play.

Tell us then. How much less could you care?

Re:competition

[Bert64]

Do you think *anyone* would use these browsers if they weren't free?
Users would have to pay for their OS, and use whatever browser it came with. This would lead to another IE6, where the browser stagnates for many years because it has no competition.

Users who wanted to use a free OS would be unable to access all parts of the web, forcing them to either pay up, be left out or become "pirates".

The ascent of Firefox and now Chrome has been nothing but good for the web as a whole, because they broke the IE6 stranglehold there is finally innovation happening on the web again... CSS is moving forwards, HTML5 is well on its way to being widespread, MS have been forced to start improving their browser and it's much easier for other organisations to make useful web browsing devices.

Could the iPhone have existed 10 years ago when the majority of sites were designed only for IE? Probably not, people would have considered it to be a half assed browsing experience (like WAP and other mobile browsers were) and it would have died out.

Re:competition

[paimin]

GP isn't talking about Chrome, Opera, and Firefox. He's talking about the knee-jerk Slashtards that twist every discussion into an opportunity to bash whatever company they currently think is uncool. At it's best, /. *can* be a source for reasoned technical discussion and information. At it's worst, /. is a bunch of loser dorks stroking each other about how geeky and elite they are, and how everyone else are sheep and fashion victims. In a sea of that, it's always refreshing to see a calm, well-reasoned post.

Re:competition

[LingNoi]

Your blueray player uses chrome? wut...

Re:competition

[huzur79]

And Microsoft offered to cover the license free for Mozilla so that the video issue in HTML would be done with. Google has just set back HTML 5 by years. Additionally the contract for the license has in writting that it will not exceed 10% of current rates at renewal. Most important of all, WebM is not lawsuit proof, they will get sued and those that use it could be named as well. h.264 is pretty safe because its a very large patents pool. The chances of something coming up from that which isn't covered already is low. WebM on the other hand is just google. And google isn't taking the responsibility for any patent suits so every user of it is at risk. And for those that say well no one has sued Theora yet, so what. If they ever get popular and some one worth sueing uses it, it will happen. Google has money so you can bet WebM will result in lawsuits. Simple Solution, browsers support h.264, WebM and Theora, and web sites can decide if they want the best and safest codec h.264 or the risky but politically correct open formats. It is so hard to put support of all 3 into the browsers?

Re:competition

[HermMunster]

You need to go back and research what happened with AM/FM radio. It isn't what you think. I believe there's a good National Geographic episode on it, or maybe a Discovery episode. Either way it is very informative.

It's inappropriate to be setting forth a premise such as yours without backing it up. It leads to a very confusing version of what really happened.

Re:competition

[Dan Ost]

Of course, my understanding is that Theora and VP8 infringe on a subset of the H.264 patents anyway, although no one is entirely sure which ones and no one really wants to go looking.

How can you add any weight to a claim that patents are infringed if "no one is entirely sure which ones and no one really wants to go looking"?

It's not like WebM isn't open for inspection and the patents in the patent pool are known.

If there was a clear infringement, we'd know about it. Most likely, if there are any patents that cover WebM, google has decided that the patent is invalid and so they're not afraid of it. And similarly, the patent holder would be afraid to sue because if the patent gets invalidated, they don't get their money from all the H.264 licensees.

Re:competition

[Dan Ost]

How many of those patents have survived legal challenge?

Re:competition

[Bert64]

How do you propose Google, Mozilla and Opera continue to give away their browser for free if they have to pay 10 cents for every user of it?
How are open source developers supposed to pay 10 cents for everyone who uses their code?

This is basically an attempt to kill free software, because in a free market price competition would eventually turn software into an utterly unprofitable business, where software is all given away free.

Re:competition

[terjeber]

Google doesn't have to pay 10c or anything at all to support H.264 in their browser. They can do what everybody should do and support whatever codecs I have on my computer. The vast majority of PCs today have H.264 decoders installed. Use that and you can play H.264 video without paying a dime in licensing fees.

H.264 is the industry standard for video. It has hardware acceleration support on most newer PCs. Google is again doing thei customers a huge disservice. They are NIH hardheaded morons.

Re:competition

[terjeber]

Easy, they don't ship a codec with their browser but use whatever codecs are installed on the PC on which the browser is installed. Voila, no licensing fees and you get hardware acceleration thrown in for free.

Google is a bunch of hard-headed morons who hate everything htat is NIH.

Re:competition

[Bert64]

Which would make it impossible to access the web using free software, you would have to pay for an h.264 license if you wanted to browse the web...
That starts a slippery slope, and in a few years time anyone wanting to use linux might end up having to buy licenses from a large number of sources, or buy a distro which includes them. Gone would be the days of downloading a free cd image and using it.

Software companies are scared of free (as in no cost) software, because they realise that if they have to face competition, eventually it will force prices down to nothing.
Just look at hardware, years of competition have resulted in very rapid innovation in the hardware space, combined with rapidly dropping prices and razor thin margins. The only reason hardware isn't given away free is because of per unit costs (ie materials & manufacturing)...

The use of patents is twofold, firstly to provide a base on software prices to prevent competition driving the price to zero and second (later) to create an artificial barrier of entry into the market so that smaller more nimble competitors cannot compete with the established players, thus allowing them to keep prices high.

If left to a free market, software would become a business where no money can be made (as it has no natural floor to pricing), and all commercial software development would be done by companies using it to aid other lines of business (hardware, consultancy, internal use etc)... You would also find that a majority of software would be open source because pooling your development effort would save a lot of money (think of the effort of building your own embedded os from scratch vs using linux and making the tweaks you need).

Google most likely realise this, which is why they make their money from offering services.

Re:competition

[terjeber]

Software companies are scared of free (as in no cost) software, because they realise that if they have to face competition, eventually it will force prices down to nothing

Free software is a myth. It doesn't exist. Someone is always paying. For Linux, for example, where the vast majority of contributions happens from paid developers, the customers of the companies dedicating resources to Linux are paying. One way or another.

The fact that you are not paying for the privilege of running Linux doesn't mean it is free, it just means that you are a leech and that some other poor slob is carrying you.

If left to a free market, software would become a business where no money can be made

This is actually pure rubbish. The cost of software today is so high that specialized business have to thrive in the market.

development would be done by companies using it to aid other lines of business

Ah, to be young and dumb again. Sorry, but it used to be like that. Universities didn't teach software development, they taught maths. Software was only developed as a side-business to sell hardware or services. Nobody made money out of software. Tell you what: You don't want that back. It makes for poor software made by people who have no concept of what the end-user wants or needs. It is an unsustainable model, and it will send us back to the 1970s software quality wise. Want proof? Three words. "Linux Desktop Software". I am a big fan of Linux. I use it personally and professionaly almost everywhere. For all the software that exists on multiple platforms (GUI oriented software) it is always a nightmare to use on Linux compared to any of the other platforms. There is one Unix with a decent interface and that is OSX.

Google most likely realise this, which is why they make their money from offering services.

And that is just clueless. Google makes money selling your personal data to advertisers, not from offering services. I don't even think Google has a professional services arm at all.

Re:competition

[commodore64_love]

>>>Can you please pay the Licensing fees then for everyone?

You can't afford the MPEG's 10-20 cents extra per iPod? That is a shame. (shrug). Well *I* can't afford to spend several hundred dollars to buy new iPods, iPads, and other Gadgets that can play this NEW WebM codec. I think MY reason (save almost a thousand dollars) is more compelling then your reason (save 10 pennies).

Hundreds of dollars >>>>> 0.1 dollars.
I side with me.
If that makes me an ass, so be it.

Re:competition

[cpu6502]

>>>You have to get on your knees and beg permission (and pay) to implement H.264.

False, false, false.
The non-profit MPEG gives their codecs away
for free to anyone earning less than $500,000.
I don't have to pay.

Re:competition

[cpu6502]

Europe, Japan, Australia all embraced AM Stereo, set a single standard, and it boomed throughout the 80s and 90s. Meanwhile in the USA it flopped because consumers were confused which of 3 AMS codecs to purchase. It died.

Re:competition

[cpu6502]

>>>This clearly is an interesting experiment in competition, which will have more support? Google or MS?

I like the nonprofit MPEG group. - They've done a lot of good work these last 25 years (MPEG1, MPEG2, MP3, JPEG, MPEG4, AAC, HE-AAC), and I don't see any reason to stop using their specifications. I especially love those most-recent specs which let me send video to my friend who's stuck on dialup, or listen to FM-quality radio at only 14kbit/s.

As for microsoft or google, I could care less.

Re:competition

[cpu6502]

P.S.

I just don't see any compelling reason to switch to a new codec when every iPod, iPad, iGadget, TV I own already uses MPEG4's H264. It makes as little sense to me as deciding to move from MP3 to Snogg Vorbis. I'd rather just stick with the current standard.

Oh and yes Firefox, Opera, et cetera support MPEG4 video, via the Flash support.

Re:competition

[commodore64_love]

>>>only if you make more than x amount of money, do you have to pay a very reasonable royalty fee..... unless you think MPEG-LA are codec fascists who are only out to screw everyone..... [MPEG4/h264] is an open-source codec that's freely available for non-profit use.
>>>

I want to hug you.
FINALLY someone on slashdot displays some THINKING ability instead of trying to worship Oope-source WEBM as if it was a religion, and MPEG was the devil incarnate. THANK YOU for finally posting a rational argument. (But sadly you'll probably be modded "troll" in order to shut you up).

Re:competition

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir, are an idiot

And in other news...

[haydensdaddy]

Microsoft has filed a patent application for Irony...

Re:And in other news...

[Kilrah_il]

Alanis Morissette claims prior art

Re:And in other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Alanis Morissette claims prior art

It's like rain on your patent application.

Re:And in other news...

[gman003]

Man, I remember Irony before it sold out. Irony used to have integrity.

Now, the only way I can appreciate Irony is ironically.

Re:And in other news...

[Kilrah_il]

+1 Hilarious!

Re:And in other news...

[dogmatixpsych]

So that explains what's wrong with the patent office. First, they thought that Alanis' song counted as art. Second, they didn't know that only thing ironic is Alanis' lack of irony in the song.

Paten office problem solved! Just get new people in there who are a little more educated. ;)

Re:And in other news...

[EdgeyEdgey]

Patent fail

Re:And in other news...

[miquels]

Irony .. isn't that like goldy and bronzy only made out of iron ?

Mike.

Re:And in other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

But... the irony of that song was that the examples in the song are not about things that are ironic...

Re:And in other news...

[Kilrah_il]

Let me be the first to tell you: Whooosh!

66% + 25%

[gbjbaanb]

The hyperlinks in Microsoft's blog post lead readers to data indicating that two-thirds of Web videos are using H.264, with about another 25% using Flash VP6

yes, but once Google updates Youtube to only use WebM, I guess that'll show 91% of all online video to be in WebM format.

I wonder what Microsoft will say then?

Re:66% + 25%

[Anonymous Coward]

"Microtube"

Re:66% + 25%

[Junta]

They'll celebrate the fact that Youtube suicided, or won't be impacted at all.

The former will happen if they did that move without Adobe supporting it in flash. It may well still happen because all the iPhones and similar in the world suddenly couldn't play youtube content because they depended on efficient ASICs that can't be adapted to WebM and there isn't enough generic processing power to do it without such an ASIC.

The latter will happen if they figure a way around it on mobile devices, and have a flash update enable it for all browsers which will render the difference between IE and Chrome moot once again.

Re:66% + 25%

[cpu6502]

Youtube may switch to WebM, but it still supports flash doesn't it? So Microsoft Explorer and Apple Safari users won't notice any difference at all.

Re:66% + 25%

[bryonak]

It may well still happen because all the iPhones and similar in the world suddenly couldn't play youtube content because they depended on efficient ASICs that can't be adapted to WebM and there isn't enough generic processing power to do it without such an ASIC.

What ASICs?
Video decoding is usually implemented in DSPs, so even Apple has the theoretical ability to easily play back VP8 efficiently. The IP is just now being distributed, decoders are starting to get programmed and will be used by future Android handsets...
While iPhones may be stuck on h264 if Apple really acts unreasonably, they don't pose a threat for WebM adoption, given their smaller market share (compared to future VP8-enabled devices).

Re:66% + 25%

[TheRaven64]

Add to that, VP8 is very similar to H.264 and other codecs. The implement in libavcodec is around 1400 lines of code, most of which is just calling existing decoder functions with different constants. Even quite specialised H.264 decoders (i.e. ones that do entire steps entirely in hardware) can probably be modified to support VP8 without too much effort. The DSPs in most ARM SoCs almost certainly can.

Re:66% + 25%

[Anonymous Coward]

Add to that, VP8 is very similar to H.264 and other codecs.

Which is exactly why WebM is a patent mess. Just because the implementation is open source, it doesn't mean that the standard is open for anyone to use freely.

Google conveniently overlooks this fact. If the development history with Android tells us anything, is that Google will not extend patent protection to companies using WebM.

Re:66% + 25%

[ogapo]

They'll celebrate the fact that Youtube suicided

Unlikely. Honestly, I really think YouTube's google's ace. Do you really think if they switched formats the result wouldn't be something similar to "Hello IE or Safari user, click here to do automatically install this WebM plugin to continue using YouTube" that 95% of all users wouldn't just do it the first time they saw it. As long as the switch was painless, and they left a (harder to find) back door link to watch videos in H.264 for a little while for the sake of those who have problems with the plugin, it would probably go off without a hitch.

Re:66% + 25%

[John Betonschaar]

You are both wrong. The most resource-intensive parts of a video codecs are handled by DSP's that are very specific to the codecs they support. While some parts of WebM will translate to current hardware just fine, some parts of the standard have been found not to translate to it at all. Just read this to educate yourself on the subject before assuming hardware WebM support will be a matter of a simple firmware update:

http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377

Re:66% + 25%

[Junta]

That ignores the fact that more and more web access, *particularly* for youtube-type content is coming from embedded style devices (phones, TVS, etc), which generally are not so straightforward and may even be incapable of dealing with a different format even with a hypothetical firmware upgrade.

The short of it is, Google is in no way going to try to stupidly use youtube as a 'weapon' like that because they aren't complete morons. Just like MS using that statistic borders on the pointless as those video sites aren't using browser-native HTML5 to play it back on a desktop browser *anyway*.

Re:66% + 25%

[tepples]

I have already read the linked page, which is long. Can you cite individual paragraphs to which you refer?

Re:66% + 25%

[Anonymous Coward]

Junta's reply is right. Also consider users at work, who aren't local administrators and can't install plugins.

Youtube was successful at least partly because it just worked; no new plugins needed to be installed, unlike the previous generation of video sites that required up to date WMV, Realplayer or Quicktime plugins to be installed.

Re:66% + 25%

[tepples]

Add to that, VP8 is very similar to H.264 and other codecs.

Which is exactly why WebM is a patent mess.

As I understand the responses to http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377 on various web sites, the differences between H.264 baseline and VP8 are precisely in those points where H.264 is patented.

Re:66% + 25%

[John Betonschaar]

Why not..

One more thing to note is the data partitioning scheme used by VP8. This scheme is much like VP3/Theora’s and involves putting each syntax element in its own component of the bitstream. The unfortunate problem with this is that it’s a nightmare for hardware implementations, greatly increasing memory bandwidth requirements. I have already received a complaint from a hardware developer about this specific feature with regard to VP8.

non-adaptive arithmetic coding has to have some serious penalties. It may also be a hardware implementation problem.

I would expect, with equally optimized implementations, VP8 and H.264 to be relatively comparable in terms of decoding speed. This, of course, is not really a plus for VP8: H.264 has a great deal of hardware support, while VP8 largely has to rely on software decoders, so being “just as fast” is in many ways not good enough

The VP8 interpolation filter is likely slightly better, but will definitely be slower to implement, both encoder and decoder-side. A staged filter allows the encoder to precalculate all possible halfpel positions and then quickly calculate qpel positions when necessary: an unstaged filter does not, making subpel motion estimation much slower

This is all only about the parts of VP8 that might be difficult or expensive to implement in hardware in the first place. The rest of the article is riddled with cases where VP8 does things completely different from H264, which means many hardware implementations that implement H264 will not be able to handle them as well as they handle H264. Companies designing SoC's that decode video spend millions on optimizing the hardware down to the last CPU cycle and milli-Watt, often taking shortcuts or accepting limitations on what you can do with them as long as it serves their primary purpose, which is decoding a specific type of video. I've worked on such DSP's and just getting them to run the stuff they are designed for is already very difficult, let alone trying to repurpose them to handle codecs that were never considered in the design phase.

Re:66% + 25%

[edxwelch]

It maybe similiar, but VP8 codec still doesn't exist on current iPhones.

Re:66% + 25%

[hedwards]

Not really, Apple won't allow Flash on their iPhones, Google provides a Youtube app for Android, and I'm not really sure what RIM does with Blackberry. Point being that the developers are likely to fix that before it even gets to the point where the end user has to change any configuration files.

Re:66% + 25%

[makomk]

Precisely. The patents aren't necessarily hard to avoid, it's just that the h.264 standards body had fairly large incentives to deliberately design h.264 to be covered by them. (More precisely, the members that owned the patents had incentives to do so.)

Re:66% + 25%

[LingNoi]

Chrome, Firefox and Opera don't or will no longer support h.264 without nitpicking that's 50% of the browser market. If you look at the trend I think Microsoft has more to be worried about then youtube with its slow but constant drop of share.

Even if youtube forced everyone to use just chrome I predict more then 50% of users would do it, because nothing is going to stop them from watching their videos.

Re:66% + 25%

[shutdown -p now]

The implement in libavcodec is around 1400 lines of code, most of which is just calling existing decoder functions with different constants.

I'm sure this will be an interesting line in the court once MPEG LA sues someone over WebM...

Re:66% + 25%

[mAriuZ]

That is why minitube doesn't work for the moment , and it gives an mp4 file error
anyway i will wait the new release http://twitter.com/#!/flaviotordini/status/12924187333107712

Re:66% + 25%

[chowdahhead]

I can decode 360p @ 24fps in software on a cortex A8 using the reference encoder. That's not good enough for all cases but for watching youtube on a small screen, it looks great. The speed of the decoder will improve--with 0.9.5 it already has--and it might be possible to further accelerate decoding using the DSPs. It worked pretty well for the Theora port. The way forward is obviously a hardwired codec which TI has already demoed on the OMAP4. But a firmware upgrade would at least allow existing devices to access webm content on youtube in software.

Re:66% + 25%

[intangible]

Current iPhones don't have 4G yet either. In June when Apple announces the next "magical" phone with 4G, it can have hardware WebM decoding if they want... most of the fanbois will upgrade right away.

Re:66% + 25%

[terjeber]

Microsoft will say nothing. You are right, 91% of online video will be in the WebM format. All the kittens. All the laughing babies. Each and every dumb-ass boy trying to jump across something and failing.

In the mean time, all commercial video online will be H.264. All the sports. All the TV shows. Every legit movie sharing service. All of it. Google are wrong on this one. Simple. They are bone-headed morons. They will change.

Re:66% + 25%

[Anonymous Coward]

The most resource-intensive parts of a video codecs are handled by DSP's that are very specific to the codecs they support

[Citation Needed]
DSPs are programmable; in fact they are quite similar to GPUs which is why you need to buy separate video cards for DirectX and OpenGL... Oh, wait, no you don't.

While some parts of WebM will translate to current hardware just fine, some parts of the standard have been found not to translate to it at all.

Oh, really? H.264 has parts that don't translate into hardware well, specifically CABAC. That encoding/compression scheme forces the stream to be pumped linearly and split which is horridly slow in hardware which gets most of the superior performance from doing things in massively parallel pipelines.

The solution is to just do the messy part on the CPU and send a clean stream to the DSP for the rest of the processing.

Just read this to educate yourself on the subject before assuming hardware WebM support will be a matter of a simple firmware update

DSPs can have ROMs that aren't reprogrammable but those tend to be uncommon. Programmable DSPs generally do not have enough storage to store large collections of unrelated algorithms — how do you think that a device can support hardware accelerated H.264 and MPEG-4 ASP and MP3 and AAC all at the same time with only one chip? By loading Firmware images into a single accelerator DSP.

The only thing "very specific" to particular video codecs in DSPs is that they may include special instruction that perform particular transforms in a single operation. All this means is that other codecs which don't use those operations have to implement them directly using the standard add/mul/matrix instructions; Slower? Yes; drastically so? Definitely not.

Non-programmable DSP ASICs for H.264 are usually only found in broadcast, the boxes used by TV stations to real-time encode their live feed for transmission. And those things are Baseline profile anyway.

Re:66% + 25%

[Jesus_666]

They will say that two-thirds of Web videos are using H.264, with about another 25% using Flash VP6. And they will cite encoding.com on that...

Re:66% + 25%

[evilviper]

Your statement is utterly wrong. Ask the guy who wrote the VP3 spec, and he'll tell you that VPx codecs are really quite odd compared to any others.

WebM most definitely does NOT share a nontrivial amount of code with H.264... I belive you made that claim here on /. Before, and apparently ignored my reply, or chose to disbelieve it...

WebM is able to share a lot of code with other codecs in ffmpeg/libavcoded, but that is absolutely NOT h.264. The code WebM shares is mainly VP6, VP3, and Theora. Its the same in the MPEG world... any MPEG-2 decoder can handle MPEG-1 video, because they are so similar. And MPEG4 ASP video decoders have a lot in common with 1/2 as well. The other bits of code shared are general decoding routines that any video codec is going to use.

The idea that specialized H.264 decoder hardware could possibly handle WebM is completely laughable. There are vast numbers of fundamental differences between the very data ordering of the two codecs. And the specialized hardware we're talking about is the kind that won't play even supported videos if they are a few pixels larger than the max, or maybe just has too few keyframes per second. Once you've personally gotten a highly specialized H.264 decoder accelerating PNG decoding, we'll talk about something difficult like WebM...

I guess you can't convince people of the truth if they really want to believe a myth badly enough.

Re:66% + 25%

[PastaLover]

Apple won't allow WebM on their iPhones either. I don't really see where you're going with this.

Another new format.. le sigh.

[GrBear]

Dammit, does this mean I need to buy the white album again?

Re:Another new format.. le sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dammit, does this mean I need to buy the white album again?

White album, prolly no.

Star Wars Complete Saga, prolly yes.

Re:Another new format.. le sigh.

[mcgrew]

No, WebM is audio-video, the White Album is audio only. Just rip your CD with the codec of your choice.

Oh, you got it from iTunes? Too bad then. Next time get it lossless on physical media.

Hey Microsoft

[surgen]

Microsoft,

Nobody but people who spend to much time with the business world or tech world really give a damn if you're in a tiff with google. Just do whats best for the consumer: support both.

Frankly, you're in no position to talk badly about a company forcing new things on the rest of the world.

Re:Hey Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

That advice would be better directed at Google, since they are the ones dropping support for H.264.

Re:Hey Microsoft

[kestasjk]

That advice would be better directed at Google, since they are the ones dropping support for H.264.

We'll see about that..

Re:Hey Microsoft

[Thugthrasher]

Google should also support both. And really, from everything I've read (I'm no expert, though), H.264 appears to be the better standard and I definitely remember reading from multiple sources that it is more efficient. So that should be the supported standard. Don't support one because it's your friends making it. Support it because it's the best.

Re:Hey Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this because of $ for licensing? What is the underlying reason?

Re:Hey Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

It costs Google a lot of money to support H.264. They shouldn't support both, they should support the free option that is, for all practical purposes, just as good as H.264.

Re:Hey Microsoft

[Celarent Darii]

I doubt it, as the license cap is around 6 million $ which they would have passed a long time ago for all the youtube videos they convert to .mp4.

There is really no reason but political. Software apparently isn't just supposed to work, it also has to be a political statement of some kind.

I begin to wonder if GNU is more a religion than a philosophy [http://stallman.org/saint.html]

Reducing functionality is more the hallmark of a political move than an engineering decision, especially since the alternative is not even proven to work.

Re:Hey Microsoft

[rjstanford]

Actually it doesn't. Encoding free video is free (as in beer) in perpetuity. Nice FUD, though.

Re:Hey Microsoft

[GooberToo]

Not all video Google encodes is for non-commercial use. Nice FUD though.

Re:Hey Microsoft

[John Betonschaar]

You know there is an upper bound of $5 million on the H264 royalties, right? How is paying over $100 million for a company with an inefficient, badly documented codec saving Google money?

Google is in this for only 2 things: controlling another standard they can use for tracking and serving ads, and posturing how 'open' and 'free' they are compared to the likes of Microsoft and Apple, so they can add tick off another irrelevant box in the marketing department for their browser and phone OS.

Re:Hey Microsoft

[tuppe666]

You missed the word "Annual" $6 million is just this year and the costs spiral!!!

Richard Stallman does not run google. It is not a religion its a business, and has made a business decision.

Re:Hey Microsoft

[tuppe666]

$5 million a year and spiralling...its not a one of cost.

They seem to get a lot of things for their $100 million
1) Kick Apples iPlatform
2) Save Years of Patent Costs
3) Maintain a market where the defaults arn't Bing
4) Cheap encoding/decoding for everyone and submit to youtube
5) Advertising :)

I suspect Google has enough spare processing power to re-encode its Videos. It already set up to do so.

Re:Hey Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

YouTube counts as commercial use because of their various payment schemes and therefore using H.264 isn't free.

Re:Hey Microsoft

[zeroshade]

However distributing a decoder is not free regardless whether you distribute it for free. So:

1) Google pays nothing for Youtube to show videos using mp4, h.264 etc.

2) Google would have been paying over $6 million annually to be able to distribute the h.264 support in Chrome. Thus they save themselves a lot of money.

3) This is on top of whatever they had to pay for distributing non-commercial videos.

Re:Hey Microsoft

[shutdown -p now]

Ironically, if things go the way they are, it looks like IE9 will be the only browser to support H.264 (out of the box) and WebM (requires codec installation... but at least you can do that!). And then we'll have H.264-only Safari, and WebM-only Firefox, Opera and Chrome.

Re:Hey Microsoft

[RichM]

They do support both, they have publicly stated that WebM video will play if the codec is installed in Windows.
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2010/05/19/another-follow-up-on-html5-video-in-ie9.aspx

Re:Hey Microsoft

[sjames]

Are you offering to cough up for the royalties to MPEG-LA?

Re:Hey Microsoft

[Dan Ost]

A religion is merely the application of a philosophy in the absence of critical thinking.

Re:Hey Microsoft

[Confusador]

I'm pretty sure that's GP's point... if Google is going to provide a less capable product, why should MS complain? Shouldn't the only thing they have to do to win this be what they're already doing?

Re:Hey Microsoft

[terjeber]

So, if Google doesn't support H.264 and IE9 does, you can use Chrome to watch You Tube and IE9 (or Safari) to watch ESPN, NBC, ABC, Fox, Netflix, Comedy Central etc. I hope people really like You Tube. I hope they prefer it over all the commercial video content owners. The latter will use H.264.

Oh, and You Tube will never have hardware video acceleration support. I think we just saw Chrome die. Suicide apparently.

It's WAR!

[Anonymous Coward]

A years long standards war, or a free plugin for WebM support?

I do love pundits though, they make life seem so much more dramatic!

Re:It's WAR!

[Celarent Darii]

Great, another plugin to install that :

a/ costs time to code
b/ will probably be buggy
c/ will require user interaction to update
d/ will be another security problem

Please let us get rid of the whole notion of plugins to view free content. The web should just work without installing tons of crap just to watch a video.

Re:It's WAR!

[zeroshade]

They could always build the support for WebM directly into the browser. Unlike h.264, they wouldn't have to pay anything to do that. :) and no plugin, yay

Well of course..

[Junta]

MS considers their position to be perfectly opposite to google. No matter what choice google makes, MS will try to find a way to spin it as wrong and completely distinct from their own stance.

Here, MS has by many measurements, less than 50% share, and Chrome, Firefox, and Safari all reject H264, meaning it actually has a shot.

That shot is small, as practically speaking, all this HTML5 video stuff is mostly moot with 100% of those video sites using flash players, which gives not a rat's ass about any of this. This move will only reinforce Adobe's position.

Also, I wonder why the hell the browser vendors did not link into Quicktime, MS's media framework, and gstreamer respectively for their OSX, Windows, 'other' video support, instead of all this BS that won't work out well.

Re:Well of course..

[TheRaven64]

Chrome, Firefox, and Safari all reject H264

Chrome and Firefox reject H.264. Safari only supports H.264. IE9 supports whatever you have codecs installed for, which is H.264 by default but can be WebM / Theora / whatever.

Re:Well of course..

[slim]

Here, MS has by many measurements, less than 50% share, and Chrome, Firefox, and Safari all reject H264, meaning it actually has a shot.

Er, Safari prefers H.264. Apple are right behind H.264.

Re:Well of course..

[Anonymous Coward]

Safari supports everything Quicktime supports. If you have the Theora Quicktime plugin installed it will play Theora. I don't think there is a WebM plugin yet, but I haven't been following the situation closely. The Perian plugin might do it, since that uses ffmpeg/libavcodec.

Re:Well of course..

[Anonymous Coward]

Quoth the raven, 'H.264.'

Re:Well of course..

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. You and all those others should start getting your facts right:

Safari supports H.264 and any codec with installed QuickTime-filters.

http://developer.apple.com/library/safari/#documentation/AudioVideo/Conceptual/Using_HTML5_Audio_Video/Device-SpecificConsiderations/Device-SpecificConsiderations.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40009523-CH5-DontLinkElementID_13

IE9 I find a little unclear. They said they would allow custom installed WebM-codecs, but other codecs...? Their blog talks about installing extra codecs for Windows Media Player, but in the webbrowser-context they only mention ActiveX-plugins. Anyway, install Chrome Frame and IE supports open codecs ;)

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/05/03/follow-up-on-html5-video-in-ie9.aspx

Re:Well of course..

[Archibald Buttle]

Safari supports whatever you have codecs for. My copy has been happily playing back Theora videos inside HTML5 video tags for a couple of years.

Re:Well of course..

[zeroshade]

Chrome, Firefox, and Opera

Re:Well of course..

[Anonymous Coward]

Safari also supports whatever codecs are installed. I play Windows Media just fine in Safari using a third-party codec.

Re:Well of course..

[cwrinn]

I read Opera also announced dropping H.264 support. I guess IE9 and Safari will be the only ones featuring it.

Re:Well of course..

[Anonymous Coward]

Safari only supports H.264. IE9 supports whatever you have codecs installed for, which is H.264 by default but can be WebM / Theora / whatever.

No. Safari supports any codec installed as a QuickTime component, that includes WebM and Ogg Theora.

IE9 supports, and only supports, H.264 and WebM (if the codec is installed). IE9 will not use any other video codecs, even if they're installed. I'd link you to the IE blog post where they outline this but all MSDN blogs appear to be down at present. The IE blog is found at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/

We know what will happen

[Anonymous Coward]

One pundit predicts the battle will lead to yet another 'years-long standards format war.'

Wrong. Everyone will simply stick with Flash.

I hear that foot shotguns are now very fashionable amongst the Googlers.

Microsoft: A warning from history

[Raumkraut]

In a recently uncovered posting from Microsoft countless years ago, a clearly peeved Microsoft official wrote: "An open letter from the President of the United States of Mozilla", which likens Mozilla's Firefox browser's adoption of actual honest-to-god agreed W3C standards, to an attempt to force a new language on the entire world.
Internet Explorer 5, of course, supports Microsoft's bastard child of what they think HTML should be, to make them most money. The hyperlinks in Microsoft's blog post lead readers to data indicating that over 90% of web users use Internet Explorer (thus implying that popularity somehow make it the superior choice), with the rest using some crap nobody's heard of.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[pastafazou]

Internet Explorer 5 debuted in 1999. Firefox didn't arrive until the end of 2004.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[Thugthrasher]

Difference being at that time MS was wrong because W3C standards are better than MS's bastardized HTML. This time, from everything I've read on the subject, H.264 is better.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[Anonymous Coward]

Out with the old and in with the new then!

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[spinkham]

H.264 High Profile is undoubtedly more efficient them WebM. WebM quality should have an upper bound of about the same as H.264 Main Profile.

I think in that Mozilla, Google, and Opera are right on this one. This is about openness and innovation. H.264 stifles innovation, while non-patented codecs allow greater innovation.

Today, H.264 seems to make sense, but limits the freedom of people to build software, hardware, and services based around web video.

The lesson of the internet is that libre and gratis standards combined with connectivity help foster growth and innovation like nothing else we've ever created.

I support dropping H.264, at least until all browsers support a freely available codec. Free standards should be mandatory, and costly ones optional.

Unfortunately, the only way to help move some players to free standards is to refuse to support the paid ones.

I'd rather have the option of using both, but value the innovation of having free standards everywhere over that option as a short term tactical move.. That's exactly what Google, Firefox, and Opera are doing.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[cpu6502]

Explorer 5

That's what I run on my Mac G4 (400 Mhz). Yeah it sucks. But I can't run any of the currently-supported OSes like 10.4 or 10.5, due to Apple restrictions. So I can't use Safari as an alternative.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[Randle_Revar]

>Firefox

Kids these days.

Mozilla != Firefox

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[Anonymous Coward]

Explorer 5

That's what I run on my Mac G4 (400 Mhz). Yeah it sucks. But I can't run any of the currently-supported OSes like 10.4 or 10.5, due to Apple restrictions. So I can't use Safari as an alternative.

10.4 can be run on G3's. What's the restriction, you have to pay for it?

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[Celarent Darii]

Also WebM is not even an open standard. It is controlled by Google. It is even less open that flash is.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[L4t3r4lu5]

Firefox is based on Netscape. That debuted in 1994.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[Bobakitoo]

It dont matter if H.264 is better. The standard, the lowest common denominator, need to be free of patents and dirty licenses. Web sites and browser are free to support other codec if they want (http content negotiation). Although, free codec must be available by default.

If all browsers (except the free one) support both, we will end up in a situation where only the proprietary one will work with video because, as you said, H.264 is marginally better and will be prefered by the content publisher. Those publisher are lazy, they wont encode the video twice if Ie, Safari and Chrome support the same codec.

With Chrome and Firefox supporting exclusively WebM VP8 Vorbis and IE9 that will support both, publishers will have no choice but to use WebM by default. Ensuring that the web become more free and accesible by the most peoples.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[I8TheWorm]

I'd rather have the option of using both,

Strangely, IE9 would be your browser of choice then.

And I say strangely only because this is /. and here choice is always good as long as that choice has nothing at all to do with Microsoft.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[Bobakitoo]

Also WebM is not even an open standard. It is controlled by Google. It is even less open that flash is.

Open format? Yes. Three-clause BSD license with royalty-free patent license

Less open that flash? No.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[Anonymous Coward]

So you support a closed but "free" (possibly TBC) proprietary system run and controlled by a single commercial enterprise (Google) over an open standard created by multi-company input (with no one in overall control) run by a reputable international agency that has minimal end-user fees for commercial use only.

You're an idiot.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[LO0G]

Wait, you're going to tout the "standards compliance" of *Netscape*? Ummm... Netscape was just as bad as IE at standards compliance...

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[Celarent Darii]

Open format is not the same thing as an open standard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_format

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[sarhjinian]

A 400MHz G4... Let's see... That's something like my G4 Cube, which was release in 2000.

Yeah. Apple's restrictions are all that's keeping you from running a modern browser and OS on a ten year old machine. I seriously suggest you try running Chrome 9, Firefox 4 or IE9 under Win7 or Ubuntu 10.04 a P2-400 with 256 to 512MB RAM. While you're at it, try to play back an HTML5 video streamed from the web.. Let us know how it goes.

Apple is just codifying what is, for intents and purposes, a functional limitation. If I were them, I wouldn't waste resources trying to support ten-year old hardware, either. It's nice that, eg, you can run an XFCE-based desktop under Linux on that kind of hardware and perform basic tasks, but you're still up against the "Try and run a modern browser and play back H.264 or WebM video" restriction.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[natehoy]

OT, and probably not the solution you are looking for, but you can run current Linux on that Mac.

http://www.ghacks.net/2009/06/10/revive-your-old-mac-g3-g4-or-g5-with-linux/ (there are plenty more tutorials out there on the subject)

Safari can then be installed on Linux, though it's not supported by Apple and you'll find Chrome or Firefox a lot easier.

But, heck, anything's gotta be better than IE5. :)

I'm not dissing MacOS, it's good stuff. Truly. And, of course, you might have software that depends on MacOS. But you might want to at least consider adding a Linux partition and run that when you wanted to do web browsing and stuff with something a tad more modern.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[Bobakitoo]

An "open format" become "open standard" when they become a standard. This is exactly what all this is about; Pushing a open format for the video standard instead of a patent encumbered one.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[L4t3r4lu5]

Nope, I was appealing to the pedants with mod points.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[Draek]

I seriously suggest you try running Chrome 9, Firefox 4 or IE9 under Win7 or Ubuntu 10.04 a P2-400 with 256 to 512MB RAM.

It works very well, thank you.

I haven't tried streaming video yet though, but given how much of a resource hog h.264 is, I doubt it'll work very well. Still, I'm sure it'll do just fine with all other HTML5 features, far better than IE5 does for you Mac users thanks to Apple's planned obsolescence.

Sure, it's kind of off-topic on this discussion, but do keep in mind HTML5 is far more than a video codec or two.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[Thugthrasher]

So you also believe that chrome (and all browsers) should drop support for MP3 in the tag, I take it?

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[Thugthrasher]

I asked this of another poster. Does this mean you support getting mp3 out of the tag in all browsers? My understanding is that Chrome supports it. Is that a bad idea?

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[tuppe666]

I'd rather have the option of using both,

Strangely, IE9 would be your browser of choice then.

And I say strangely only because this is /. and here choice is always good as long as that choice has nothing at all to do with Microsoft.

It is definitely about choice. Google said no...and they have to pay for the damned thing.

These options do not apply to XP. The OS with the majority share :). Microsoft Wrote a plugin for Firefox for H.264 as well !?

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[I8TheWorm]

Nah, Firefox has rejected X.264 outright, much like Google is doing. Good point on XP, although it's falling out of favor fast. IE8 will run on XP, but IE9 won't.

Of note, I agree with them (Google, Mozille, et. al.) in principle, but if there's something out there in X.264 and I want to watch it, then I want to watch it.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[spinkham]

No. Forcing the WebM/Theora video issue should also have the side effect of bringing support for vorbis.

The goal is not to drop patented algorithms, it is to force everyone to support unpatented alternatives. I think dropping H.264 should be enough to accomplish this goal. If not, then yes, I do support dropping MP3.

Also note, MP3 decoder patents likely expire in 2012, and encoder patents expire in 2017, vs 2028 for H.264. That's a whole different kettle of fish on those timescales.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[Kenshin]

This is about openness and innovation. H.264 stifles innovation, while non-patented codecs allow greater innovation.

"Innovation." Yes. Because you can make better fucking videos with WebM, right?

How are you going to "innovate" with an open codec?

When it comes to the consumer, a codec is a codec. It all comes down to quality and performance, and since pretty much every bit of hardware out there directly supports H.264, giving it the performance edge by a mile, I'd say that codec provides the greatest benefit to the consumer.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[spinkham]

Innovation happens when consumers become producers.

That's the magic of open standards, with end-to-end connectivity.

The Internet's growth is the best argument for the necessity of limiting restrictions on the formats of interchange. If you needed a patent licensed server and browser to be on the net, would we have seen the innovation and growth?

It's IMPORTANT that the web does not become Cable. Cable is where you pay money for content, and that's the end of it. The use of open standards on the web allows for end users to make the software and content they choose.

If you only want cable, buy that, but stay out of the net neutrality and codec war, because its not *for* you.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[Anonymous Coward]

>>I wouldn't waste resources trying to support ten-year old hardware, either.

Right! Because ONLY those people who are lucky enough to live in a economically sound society should be the ONLY ones with the PRIVILEGE of viewing video on the internets.
Douche.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[Kenshin]

I don't see how H.264 is actively restricting aspiring young producers.

Cameras can record in it. Inexpensive software, even software that comes bundled with a computer, can author in it. Various websites like YouTube and Vimeo can serve video in it for free. Yes, that's really onerous. The average person is not going to spend one extra cent on H.264.

By the time that you reach a level where you may possibly have to pay a license fee for it, you're going to have much bigger costs in the realm of bandwidth, productions costs, and such.

As for "end to end connectivity"... H.264 is great for that, because it's widely supported and you can use it every step along the way. WebM... not so much.

It's all ideology. Like Ogg Vorbis vs MP3. MP3 may be riddled with patents, but go say "Ogg Vorbis" to some random person on the street and they'll think you're an alien.

Innovation comes from what you do with it, not whether it passes some nerd kosher test.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[KingMotley]

Yes, Microsoft is providing a plug-in for firefox so firefox can watch H.264 videos as well.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[spinkham]

Cameras can record in it, but not legally for commercial use.
http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA

Windows and Mac come with a license for personal use, but other operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD do not. Also, if you want to use it for commercial use, you need a separate license.

Yes, Youtube, Windows, and Mac are licensed, and you can use the web like a cable TV.. That's exactly my point. If we want nothing more than we have today, H.264 is fine. If we want freedom for code slingers and artists to choose their own path we need free standards.

Innovation requires freedom. I produce some small commercial videos and I write code. I cannot legally do what I want with H.264 without licensing, and they won't sell me a license. For me the choices are to break the law, use free standards, or drop the project. You'll see millions of instances of this over the next 17 years until H.264 patents expire if we don't have a free standard that's supported everywhere.

You want to have a website with paid tutorial videos? Can't use H.264 to sell content without a license.

Want to use the excellent handbrake video encoder? Can't without breaking the law.

You want to build a distributed, self-generating screensaver that produces web video? Cant without free standards.

Patented standards hamper innovation and economic growth. The most important examples of this are the ones we haven't come up with yet...

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[Bobakitoo]

MP3 are not open and are patent encumbered. Vobris(open and clear) or even AAC(open but encumbered) is preferable to MP3. Since MP3 is dated and superior alternatives are already in use, i dont see why any browser should drop MP3 support for the purpose of pushing a better standard.

1990 called, they want their MP3s and animated GIFs back.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[LingNoi]

Better for what though? Better for internet streaming?

Can I click anywhere in the video and the progressive download will start playing after downloading a few frames or do I have to wait a couple of minutes for it to download a huge chunk of the content? In my experience OGG gets this right, click anywhere and it'll start playing. H264, not so much..

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[LingNoi]

Yes because if for no other reason vorbis actually IS better in that situation and its use should be encouraged by all vendors.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[Confusador]

to quote GP:

The use of open standards on the web allows for end users to make the software and content they choose.

That's only half right. As you point out, H.264 does not restrict aspiring CONTENT producers in any meaningful way. It does, however, impose significant restrictions on aspiring SOFTWARE producers, most notably with regards to browsers but anything that plays video is affected.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[terjeber]

It's IMPORTANT that the web does not become Cable. Cable is where you pay money for content

It's IMPORTANT that you pay money for content. If not, nobody will produce it. I don't think we want a world with no ESPN, no Comedy Central, no Universal Studios and MGM, no Netflix, no CNN. I seriously don't think all the kitty videos in the world can make up for an hour of ESPN.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[Anonymous Coward]

Teehee, you didn't even use Firebird? I don't think you have enough early adopter cred to be involved in a discussion of HTML5 video

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[sarhjinian]

It's not a matter of privilege, it's a matter of technology and cost. Why should a commercial developer devote resources to supporting hardware that has long since made them any money and whose support probably diverts resources from new initiatives.

Time and technology marches on, and if you can't afford, say, an hundred-dollar Atom desktop that could play h.264 then, well, it's unfortunate. It's not like Apple or Microsoft or even Canonical built a kill-switch into their software, it's that you can't reasonably expect a developers to waste tens or hundreds of man-hours trying to shoehorn capability into a 10+ year old machine. There's a point of declining returns in play.

Should we support 286s still? ST506 drives? CGA adapters?

Or do you mean we could hold back video on the internet to appeal to people with ten-year old hardware. How would we force content providers to downsample everything to 172x144 15fps Sorenson or MPEG1? I'm a dyed in the wool socialist and even I think that's an impractical thing to do.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[spinkham]

I believe you missed the point. Let's have the WHOLE quote:

It's IMPORTANT that the web does not become Cable. Cable is where you pay money for content, and that's the end of it. The use of open standards on the web allows for end users to make the software and content they choose.

Paying for content is a valid model.

What I mean by "It's IMPORTANT that the web does not become Cable" is that I wish to avoid driving the Internet away from the "content at the edges" model where everyone can be both a consumer AND producer of content, to a centralized, controlled, homogonized pipe of a few pre-packaged pieces of content. Think the web VS compuserve or AOL if you go back that far. Or the web vs cable TV, which was my point.

I'm not saying Cable TV is bad, just that the web is the generator of innovation and growth that it is because the building blocks are both libre and gratis. Lets keep it that way as much as possible.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[terjeber]

To produce H.264 content you will need a content-production piece of software. This software can be free or it can be for pay. For-pay content production software will generally fully support H.264, Gratis software will obviously not be able to do this if there is a license fee for H.264 encoding.

So, how is allowing (as opposed to mandating) any particular codec limiting choice? How would, in any possible way, allowing H.264, the only open standard video codec with a good online profile, in Chrome limit choice? Nobody has argued that Google should not support WebM, by all means, they should. They should also support H.264. In fact they should support all codecs instaled on the users computer.

By limiting our choice to a single codec Google is the one limiting the field. Google is the one preventing me from publishing in the format that I find most suitable for my content.

Google is doing this so that Google can run the world. It is a way to limit choice not expand it. IE 9 will support whatever codec I have, it will hardware accelerate any video stream where the codec supports hardware acceleration. Google will not support HW acceleration since no HW out there will accelerate WebM.

Please elaborate on the understanding and background that leads you to conclude that limiting the choice for the entire world to one single codec is more freedom and openness than it is to allow both the producer and the consumer to chose which codec to use.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[spinkham]

This is my point:

Microsoft and Apple do not support a gratis standard, and have chosen H.264 as the only one they will support. If everyone already supported one of the gratis standards, I would agree with you, this might be a bad move.

Google's move is intended to help force Microsoft, Apple, other browsers(the large ones of whom have already), the handset manufacturers to standardize on WebM. It's better for the internet if everyone supports a gratis standard, and optionally also supports paid ones.

Once everyone supports WebM (or theora, or some other non-royalty baring standard), I believe Google might add H.264 support back into Chrome.

It's not about removing support for patented codecs, it's about forcing the inclusion of free ones.

Graits standards should be mandatory, paid ones optional, both on the producing and consuming side. That is my point, and I believe that is the goal of the action Google is taking.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[cpu6502]

>>>>>Explorer 5. That's what I run on my Mac G4 (400 Mhz). Yeah it sucks. But I can't run any of the currently-supported OSes like 10.4 or 10.5, due to Apple restrictions. So I can't use Safari as an alternative.
>>
>>I seriously suggest you try running Chrome 9, Firefox 4 or IE9 under Win7, on a P2-400 with 512MB RAM

Windows 7 works fine.
Windows XP also works fine, and WILL run Firefox 4 or Chrome 9.
See Microsoft (and others) support machines as old as my Mac G4.
Why can't Apple??? Heck they don't even support four-year-old machines.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[terjeber]

Microsoft ... have chosen H.264 as the only one they will support

BZZT! WRONG!

I believe Google might add H.264 support back into Chrome

People also believe virgins can give birth to sons of imaginary etheral entities and that clinically dead people can be arisen just by magical mumbling. That doens't make it a rational belief. Google is removing support for H.264 to kill it as a distribution codec. No more, no less.

Graits standards should be mandatory

A business as an individual should be free to operate within the law. "Should be mandatory" is something that Kim Il Jung and Joseph Stalin likes but that has somehow fallen out of favor among the thinking population.

I would never presume to say anything about what Google should and should not do, but I can analyze their motives.

I believe that is the goal of the action Google is taking

Google cares about ruling the world according to the book of Google and about selling your personal information to as many advertisers as they can. They don't give a flying dung pile about Gratis or Free.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[spinkham]

Microsoft ... have chosen H.264 as the only one they will support

BZZT! WRONG!

[Citation needed] Everything I've read says they will support H.264, and also allow whatever you want to install otherwise. Defaults matter.

I believe Google might add H.264 support back into Chrome

People also believe virgins can give birth to sons of imaginary etheral entities and that clinically dead people can be arisen just by magical mumbling. That doens't make it a rational belief. Google is removing support for H.264 to kill it as a distribution codec. No more, no less.

My opinion, your opinion. Both are rational. Mine happens to be supported: http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html But thanks for the insults anyway.

Graits standards should be mandatory

A business as an individual should be free to operate within .the law. "Should be mandatory" is something that Kim Il Jung and Joseph Stalin likes but that has somehow fallen out of favor among the thinking population.

I would never presume to say anything about what Google should and should not do, but I can analyze their motives.

So sorry. "Ideally, for the benefit of future innovation, gratis standards should be incentivised in the present market." You like that wording better? Creating an incentive for WebM adoption is exactly what Google has done.

I believe that is the goal of the action Google is taking

Google cares about ruling the world according to the book of Google and about selling your personal information to as many advertisers as they can. They don't give a flying dung pile about Gratis or Free.

They claim to. Their stated reasons lines up 100% with my guesses. Strange that... http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html

You're allowed to be sceptical, but you could try to be less of a dick about it.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[terjeber]

Defaults matter

No, they do not. IE will use the codecs on your PC, as it should. M$ is doing the right thing here. The whole purpose of having a generic way of installing codecs and other supporting functionality in an OS is for applications to make use of them. Google saying they will specifically include support for a particular codec is about as sane as having every single application ship with its own graphics and sound drivers.

Mine happens to be supported

What the article you are quoting actually says is that Google will continue to support H.264 through Flash (not a huge surprise). This makes sense for Google and supports what I and others have been saying: Google is primarily concerned how to gather as much of your personal info as possible and share this with Google advertisers. Flash gives them much better tools in this regard than does the <video> tag.

Creating an incentive for WebM adoption is exactly what Google has done

or, they have ensured that Flash will be the main mode of delivering video in the future. That would be consistent with their goals of making money off of your personal information, and it is in line with what Google says in the link you used.

They claim to... lines up 100%

You read what you read, and I read this: H.264 plays an important role in video and the vast majority of the H.264 videos on the web today are viewed in plug-ins such as Flash and Silverlight. These plug-ins are and will continue to be supported in Chrome
In other words -
the vast majority of professional content producers use H.264, and they are going to continue to to so. If we encourage H.264 content distributed using the <video> tag, we will not be able to layer advertising onto that video, and therefore we'll lose ad money. We will therefore only support H.264 in plugins where we can add advertising content and sell your personal information.

you could try to be less of a dick about it

I could. I might even try.

Re:Microsoft: A warning from history

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 7 works fine.

You have a funny definition of "fine".

Windows XP also works fine

Windows XP is also almost 10 years old.

See Microsoft (and others) support machines as old as my Mac G4.

Why can't Apple???

Sure they do, you just have to use a 10 year old OS and Apple "supports" your 10 year old hardware just fine ;)

Now if you mean with security updates, programmers don't work for free. So it's a testament to MS's vast monetary resources that they are able to continue releasing free-to-you updates to an OS you bought at most almost 10 years ago.

For someone who bitches at people for not loading ads on webpages, you sure have a bizarre set of beliefs regarding support of an almost 10 year old OS.

I agree with Microsoft

[cpu6502]

(crawls into corner and whimpers).

But seriously: I just don't see any compelling reason to switch to a new codec when everything I own already uses MPEG4's H264. It makes as little sense to me as deciding to move from Bluray to HD-DVD. Or VHS to Betamax. Or MP3 to Snogg Vorbis.

I'd rather just stick with the current standard. Oh and yes Firefox, Opera, et cetera support MPEG4 video, via the Flash support.

Re:I agree with Microsoft

[betterunixthanunix]

Mainly, it has to do with the fact that H264 is blatantly patent encumbered, whereas the patent trolls would have to at least put some effort into trying to make a patent claim with WebM.

Re:I agree with Microsoft

[cpu6502]

>>>H264 is blatantly patent encumbered,

And why should I care? What compelling reason do I, a user (or "luser" in some IT depts), have to switch to WebM that my iPod, iTV, and other gadgets can not play? What motive do I have to go=out and spend a few hundred dollars buying NEW gadgets with WebM inside them?

Nothing occurs to me. Hence I'll keep using the MPEG4/h264 that is already built-into my devices.

Re:I agree with Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you are using Chrome or Firefox on your iPod how is this proposed google change going to effect you in any way? And if its not, then whats your problem ? This is about streaming videos across the internet to your browser - nothing more. It even says it in its name - WebM.

Re:I agree with Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

cpu6502 has reading comprehension problems and freaked out thinking he's gonna have to re-encode all his illegally downloaded videos. Would take a looooong time on a 6502 processor don't ya know...

Re:I agree with Microsoft

[erroneus]

Congratulations. You just admitted to being a proud member, in good standing, of "sheeple." Your thinking on the matter lacks depth of understanding beyond your own immediate interests and fail to appreciate how the larger ecosystem can have tremendous benefits to you and your entertainment media cravings.

But let me help explain this in simple terms for you:

When technologies are legally encumbered, the only parties who can play in that arena are "the big players" whose interests do not lie in giving you the best or least expensive experience available -- on the contrary, they seek to limit competition and to limit your choices and capabilities in order to ensure that you buy the same thing over and over and over again... like a good sheep does.

Re:I agree with Microsoft

[cpu6502]

>>>beyond your own immediate interests

Yes.
Your point? My desire not to go-out and spend several hundred dollars upgrading to WebM-capable iGadgets sounds like a damn good reason to me. Can you persuade me why I am wrong? No. You cannot.

>>>When technologies are legally encumbered,

Only for a few more years, and then MPEG4's h264 falls into public domain and becomes as "open" as webM. I'd rather just wait.

Re:I agree with Microsoft

[John Betonschaar]

The sheep are people like you who mindlessly repeat the same mantra's about who licensed software stifles innovation and locks out the small players, like you did.

Fact: the most popular, most widely used, and as regarded by many the best H264 encoder/decoder on the market is *free* as in speech, *free* as in beer, *open* as in open-source, and *100% legal* that they negotiated a licensing scheme with MPEG-LA, to allow commercial use of x264, taking royalties from x264 licensees.

Your arguments are defective and irrelevant in the context of H264 codecs.

Re:I agree with Microsoft

[Shikaku]

Only for a few more years, and then MPEG4's h264 falls into public domain and becomes as "open" as webM. I'd rather just wait.

2027 is a few years?

>>>beyond your own immediate interests
>>>When technologies are legally encumbered,

Web browsers may cost money again to play HTML5 video encoded in h264.

That's the issue.

Re:I agree with Microsoft

[sarhjinian]

He could mean, say, the iPod Touch, and it is a valid concern: there are a lot of devices like it, devices that support hardware-accelerated h.264 but might not ever see an update for WebM. Even if Android ends up ruling the world, there's still years worth of sales of other devices to deal with.

I don't think people appreciate how embedded h.264 is. It's the primary codec for Flash, for BluRay, for DivX/Xvid. It's in phones, tablets, embedded devices, etc. I'd feel better if Google was doing this for altruistic reasons, but they're not fully opening WebM, nor are they offering patent indemnification. Nor is WebM demonstrably better than h.264. Google has Youtube in it's favour, but that's really about it. I don't believe you can even get hardware-accelerated WebM in new Android devices, let alone upgrade older ones.

Meanwhile, h.264's licensing terms are well known, understood and not completely unreasonable, and it's more or less guaranteed to play on a whole bunch of extant devices.

Re:I agree with Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Snogg Vorbis.

All your arguments are invalid for the rest of your life.

Re:I agree with Microsoft

[TheReal_sabret00the]

All the stuff that you're referring to. TV, iPod, etc, etc aren't even effected. Very little is effected by this. It only means that when surfing, if a site provides raw video using the VIDEO tag, your browser will either play it or it won't. In some cases, sites will have a fallback of flash. You'll barely notice the change. Apple will still opt for H.264 on ipods. And so will DVD/Blueray producers.

Re:I agree with Microsoft

[tuppe666]

You need iTunes. Have a proprietary dock you are pretty locked into Apples infrastructure, and then get upset when things happen outside it. WebM is just one Codec...there will be others. Enjoy your equipment. I will be watching WebM on my TV and on the move.

Re:I agree with Microsoft

[erroneus]

When you say "...that they negotiated a licensing scheme..." who is "they" you speak of?

As I said in another comment, Microsoft has managed to tax the planet with its office documents formats. To prevent any one entity from taxing the internet, we must all be watchful with regards to various formats in use, how faithfully they are implemented and, of course, how expensive and prohibitive a license may be to implement them.

Re:I agree with Microsoft

[KingMotley]

Because if you download the video, and put it on your iPod/cell phone, if it was h.264 it would just play, and play by being decoded in hardware which uses very little power. On the other hand, if it was WebM, currently it would not play AT ALL. Apple (or your cell phone provider) COULD make a WebM codec for the device, but then it would not be decoded in hardware, but using software instead. *IF* the devices CPU was fast enough (and I'm not saying it is, and in many cases it likely is not), then it would take an enormous amount of power in comparision, and drain the devices battery in a matter of an hour or two.

Therefore, H.264 = green. Google supporting WebM will likely cost you more in your electricity bill in a few days than the added $.10 they would require to put it in Chrome (*IF* they weren't already capped by the license, essentially making it FREE for them to put into their browser).

Re:I agree with Microsoft

[zeroshade]

WebM is fully open. And WebM is demonstrably just as good as H.264 Main Profile. Currently there are many hardware manufacturers working on the next generation of hardware having WebM embedded in them. So while yes, you do have all the current devices that are in people's hands to compete with, it's not like it would be impossible for WebM to get the same amount of penetration.

Re:I agree with Microsoft

[zeroshade]

You miss the point though. What if someone had an idea to innovate and wanted to implement a better H264 encoder/decoder? They are restricted from distributing their innovation unless they also negotiate with the MPEG-LA. Thus if they are a small group of people who have no bartering power, why would the MPEG-LA let them? They have their scheme with x264. The small player gets locked out and innovation becomes stifled.

Isn't the desire to snuff out WebM and only use H.264, threatening it that it might infringe on patents or otherwise an attempt to stifle the innovation that created the new codec?

Actually pretty funny

[gman003]

I found MS's blog post to be pretty dang funny. If you don't get the satire, check where all those links go - apparently Theora was made by Klingons.

Sure, I disagree with Microsoft's stance, but I will concede that they made a very humorous point.

Re:Actually pretty funny

[fregaham]

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, ...

Re:Actually pretty funny

[ifrag]

Hmm, so that means H.264 is made by... the Ferangi?

Re:Actually pretty funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes only a drunk Klingon could code so badly and make so many bad design choices about either theora or ogg.

Re:Actually pretty funny

[Ant P.]

Borg.

Re:Actually pretty funny

[Anonymous Coward]

It's kind of like how sometimes the weird fat kid that no one likes learns that if he tells jokes, people will pay attention to him.

If Google want to pull a Microsoft

[clickety6]

If Google want to pull a Microsoft they just need to drop flash and H.264 in Youtube and convert everything to WebM and then convince (bribe) Netflix to do the same...

Re:If Google want to pull a Microsoft

[ducomputergeek]

Netflix ain't going anywhere near WebM until WebM has DRM technology built into it. Until that happens, the studios won't let them.

Re:If Google want to pull a Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be more than happy if Netflix started using an encoding that I could decode from Linux!

Re:If Google want to pull a Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix needs DRM so Netflix will always use Silverlight (Currently) or Flash.

Re:If Google want to pull a Microsoft

[Seth Kriticos]

Netflix only servers 300 million users max. (U.S. residents only). The Internet is actually much larger (global), so it would not make that much difference.

Google on the other hand does global business, so they can and probably will make a dent if they want to. And it seems they want.

Re:If Google want to pull a Microsoft

[DrXym]

No, if Google want to pull a Microsoft they just do what they've done here. Microsoft was rightly flamed for only including VC-1 in Silverlight and for generally trying to inflict VC-1 everywhere they had their claws sunk in. They were flamed because there already was a perfectly good standard in H264 and their own codec really didn't add much to the party except complicate hardware and software now burdened with implementing two codecs.

Some might argue that WebM is not patent encumbered, but it still has Google at the helm. The codec goes where Google says it goes. My take is this is a preemptive move at MPEG-LA so when licencing negotiations come up again for YouTube or elsewhere they can wave WebM around and threaten to go off their own way. Realistically that won't happen without a massive infrastructure change, but it's still a threat with some bite. Of course once its served its purpose and YouTube gets a reduced rate or whatever you might suddenly find Google have a change of heart and back H264 again.

Re:If Google want to pull a Microsoft

[Stregano]

Yeah, that may be tough. The online streaming videos through a PC use Silverlight, which is a MicroSoft Technology

Re:If Google want to pull a Microsoft

[KingMotley]

You may not have liked VC-1, but many people did. Now that both h.264 and VC-1 are in even footing when producing bluray content, MANY blurays are encoded using VC-1 because they CHOOSE to use that codec because it fills their need better. That is a far cry from what you are claiming, but this is slashdot, and Microsoft bashing is the "in" thing to do here.

Google is currenlty capped at $6 million for license fees. If chrome takes off, and everyone man, woman, child, and device on the planet is using Chrome, Google will still pay $6 million. I sincerely doubt it's a negotiation tactic, but you never know with greedy businessmen. I wouldn't put it past google to totally screw the consumers, and the web to get themselves an extra 0.1% extra profit as seems the case.

Re:If Google want to pull a Microsoft

[LingNoi]

Opera, Firefox and now Chrome aren't going to have support for it. It's not Google pulling a Microsoft. It's Microsoft having a fit because the whole browser industry is going in the opposite direction they want it to go in. That leaves Safari and IE to either follow the herd or have developers bitch at them for having to add special videos for only those two browsers that refuse to add support (because of their patent interests in h264) for WebM.

Re:If Google want to pull a Microsoft

[DrXym]

There was little appreciable difference between AVC and VC-1, either in terms of picture quality of in compression. There may have been an advantage during the early days where VC-1 tools were more mature. This may explain why there were so many MPEG-2 and VC-1 but the majority of discs are now authored with AVC. VC-1 only represented 22% of encoded discs released in 2010, down from 29% in 2009, down from 33% in 2008. This can be observed on www.blu-raystats.com. It's not a codec which is going places. Of course all hardware makers are burdened with licensing it. As for why some blu rays choose VC-1 and still do, it probably boils down to history. WB bought tools to author HD DVDs and Blu Ray discs and have stuck with those tools. I wouldn't be surprised if MS was throwing free licences around like candy back a year or two ago.

Re:If Google want to pull a Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Or Google should just outright buy Netflix and change it over to WebM...Shouldn't be considered "pulling a MS" since it's open though.

Re:If Google want to pull a Microsoft

[KingMotley]

So which is it? There was already a good codec (h.264) when Microsoft introduced vc1, or was vc1 already around (with more mature tools) when h.264 was getting shoved down everyone's throat? You really can't have it both ways, lol!

If M$ is opposed then we are probably in the right

[godlike_panos]

If M$ is opposed then we are probably in the right way

FF/Chrome/Opera vs IE/Safari

[Vapula]

We have Firefox, Chrome and Opera which decide that it's a good idea to avoid a format which is so patent encumbered that you've to pay licences to program a player, to program an encoder, to stream a video and to create a commercial video using that format (try to guess what it'd be like if authors had to pay Microsoft a licence to use the.doc format when they write their novel).

And on the other side, Apple (Safari) which own part of the licences and Microsoft who decided to pay... But neither are streaming anything (unlike Google via Youtube) and both have plenty of money available.

I don't see the problem with Google removing H.264 support from his browser... It's not like if he was the only one who don't support that format nor like if he had a major market choice...

What could have been wrong would be if Google suddently moved Youtube to WebM-only without Flash or H264 fallback AND was the only one to support that format... But the format is open and free...

Re:FF/Chrome/Opera vs IE/Safari

[Celarent Darii]

Format is open and free .....

Well let me see, how many programmers to implement WebM in your browser....

How many cycles to convert current videos and data to new codec....

How many tech support calls because plug-in is buggy, not up to date or another security problem....

It turns out that this format is
        a/ expensive to implement
        b/ expensive to convert existing content
        c/ expensive to support

I don't care if it is open (which it isn't, it belongs to Google; it is NOT an open standard), it is not going to be free.

Re:FF/Chrome/Opera vs IE/Safari

[ducomputergeek]

If suddenly they did that, everyone would be bitching at google because suddenly they broke YouTube. Especially the mobile market because of the millions of mobile devices out there that currently support H.264 hardware decoding. WebM won't be on those devices anytime soon and even if it was, it would be software decoding...aka kiss your battery life good bye.

I worked in video production for several years and H.264 is a freaking god-send. Finally we had a good codec choice that was pretty much universally adopted. You could encode a video once, play anywhere. I remember what it was like before having to reencode a video in Quicktime, then WMV, and then Real Player as your "fall back". That ate up a lot of CPU cycles. Talking with many of my friends still in the video business and right now WebM isn't even on their radar to be honest.

I asked a couple of them why and their answers summed up were:

1) It's not in any of their hardware. All their hardware pretty much shoots/plays H.264. So does the hardware their clients use.
2) Not supported in Avid, FCP, or Premiere. (I don't know any one using Vegas professionally at the moment)
3) Offers no clear technical advantages over H.264 at this point. (at least that they can see)
4) Already have H.264 commercial licenses.
5) If Google switches youtube over, then they can upload their H.264 video and let google's servers to the conversion.

A couple grumbled about Why Yet Another Format War when they felt everyone had finally settled on H.264. And when I brought up the issue of licensing most shrugged as they buy content licenses all the time for music, sound effects, 3D models, and the cost of H.264 was pennies compared to what some were paying ASCAP, etc..

Re:FF/Chrome/Opera vs IE/Safari

[SmilingBoy]

And on the other side, Apple (Safari) which own part of the licences and Microsoft who decided to pay...

Microsoft also is part of the MPEG-LA patent pool for H.264, which I guess you mean with "owns part of the licences".

Re:FF/Chrome/Opera vs IE/Safari

[I8TheWorm]

I have no problem at all with Google changing the format of Youtube videos... that's theirs to decide. But if Chrome absolutely will not support H.264 then I'll likely stop using it.

I want choice.

Re:FF/Chrome/Opera vs IE/Safari

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess that's why they're artists rather than scientists or engineers. Thankfully, we can actually see beyond our own nose, and think further than five minutes ahead of us.

Re:FF/Chrome/Opera vs IE/Safari

[Draek]

So what will you use? Apple and Microsoft have refused to support WebM so far (and given their mutual hatred of Google, are unlikely to ever do so) and neither Firefox nor Opera can support h.264.

Re:FF/Chrome/Opera vs IE/Safari

[John Betonschaar]

You forgot about the part where you'll need to encode at higher bitrates because WebM is technically inferior to H264, how you will need more power and time to stream or transcode since the only available WebM encoder is slow as molasses and not nearly as good as the better h264 encoders, and how you will have to replace hardware that doesn't support WebM and never will because the chips in it weren't designed for them.

WebM brings nothing to the table that actual users would benefit from. Literally nothing. The only thing it brings is a format Google can use for more tracking and ad serving, while posturing how 'open' and 'free' we are. If WebM prevails, users will get lower quality, less privacy and more ads, but somehow Google tricked them into thinking it benefits them. It's fascinating.

Re:FF/Chrome/Opera vs IE/Safari

[Gadget_Guy]

Well let me see, how many programmers to implement WebM in your browser....

Compared with the $6.5 million for the royalties of H.264, that is just a drop in the ocean.

How many cycles to convert current videos and data to new codec....

What video hosting site doesn't automatically convert uploaded videos into whatever format that it requires? Apparently it can't be THAT much of a problem to do. The site that I use at work automatically downloads in whatever format is supported by the browser, meaning it converts the video into ALL of the formats that it uses. The conversion and storage is no problems for them.

How many tech support calls because plug-in is buggy, not up to date or another security problem....

As opposed to the rest of the code that makes up a browser? Once again, just a drop on the ocean!

Re:FF/Chrome/Opera vs IE/Safari

[I8TheWorm]

IE will support anything you have a codec for. Sadly, that may wind up being the way I have to go.

Or maybe I'll tweak the Mozilla source. Right now I'm not sure.

But a company loses my interest the moment they start limiting my choice under the guise of my best interests.

Re:FF/Chrome/Opera vs IE/Safari

[Ash-Fox]

Or maybe I'll tweak the Mozilla source.

Why not tweak the Chromium source?

Re:FF/Chrome/Opera vs IE/Safari

[I8TheWorm]

Because I have a limit on how much new shit I'll pick up in a given time period :)

Re:FF/Chrome/Opera vs IE/Safari

[tuppe666]

Because benefit vs effort in doing so for himself is negligible and he can't distribute it for the same reasons Mozilla/Google don't Lots and lots of Money!

Re:FF/Chrome/Opera vs IE/Safari

[Anonymous Coward]

Streaming companies' fees are capped at 100k/site/year.

Re:FF/Chrome/Opera vs IE/Safari

[LingNoi]

Microsoft refusing to support the same features as other browsers?! I'M SHOCKED!

My irony metre exploded.

[mjwx]

Microsoft is accusing Google of trying to lock people into their standard?

Is someone at MS taking the piss?

Re:My irony metre exploded.

[TheRaven64]

No, they're speaking from experience.

Re:My irony metre exploded.

[Yvanhoe]

Not into "their standard" but into an open standard (which should be what all "standards" are anyway)

Re:My irony metre exploded.

[icebraining]

Along with an OSS decoder library that can be included in proprietary software.

Re:My irony metre exploded.

[Pigskin-Referee]

Not into "their standard" but into an open standard (which should be what all "standards" are anyway)

The great thing about standards is that there are so many of them.

Just a bad arguments....

[snaggen]

English doesn't have license fees, making it unusable for everybody that doesn't want to pay. If it had, I guess Esperanto or Klingon would suddenly seem like a better choice.

Re:Just a bad arguments....

[Celarent Darii]

It still takes time and energy to learn English, as it does for any language.

Time is money.

Q.E.D. (you had to pay).

Re:Just a bad arguments....

[renoX]

> English doesn't have license fees

A 'license fee' no, but it has a higher 'aquisition cost' fee than for Esperanto..
So there is definitedly a higher cost for non-native English speaker!

Nobody said that the real world was just or logical though..

This isn't evil.

[Metabolife]

Google is pushing a free and open standard that they released at an initial loss!? What bastards! We can't let them get away with this travesty and have their name associated with everything good about to come from the internet!

Re:This isn't evil.

[Celarent Darii]

The first hit is always free.

After that you are stuck with one company who owns the specs to your codec.

MPEG is at least independent from any one company.

Re:This isn't evil.

[TheRaven64]

Well, kind of. The specs for WebM are frozen, so it doesn't really matter who controls them. They are free to use, free to implement, and there are at least two independent implementations that I know of.

Google's control over the WebM brand doesn't really mean much. Using MPEG-1 didn't mean that you were locked in to then using MPEG-2 and then MPEG-4. If the next version of WebM is rubbish then there's nothing stopping you from just using something else when you come to replace WebM 1.

Re:This isn't evil.

[Celarent Darii]

Well we used to say that Sun's control over Java didn't mean much, but that is not so sure now that that has changed.

MPEG is at least recognized by ISO and there are also implications for not conforming to the spec.

However there is no clear path to enforcing the WebM spec. If someone decides to implement "enhancements" to the video spec (for instance mandating a video stream for ads), to whom will you appeal? Who will enforce that the spec is maintained?

Also the implementation of WebM is still very much beta, as they say on their own website:

"The initial developer preview releases of browsers supporting WebM are not yet fully optimized and therefore have a higher computational footprint for screen rendering than we expect for the general releases. The computational efficiencies of WebM are more accurately measured today using the development tools in the VP8 SDKs. Optimizations of the browser implementations are forthcoming."

Thus we have a spec that is computationally more expensive, and only promises that it will get better. There is no guarantee that it will be. Even hardware implementations are not guaranteed to be better than h264 which is already a very well known entity.

Even if there are no royalty fees, the programming hours required to get your implementation at an equivalent computational footprint is expensive. Even more expensive than the royalty fees in many cases.

The specs are frozen, but by who? It is one thing if the organization that freezes a standard is an internationally recognized institution (ISO for example), another if it is just the decision of a publicly owned company.

Plus the spec is technically inferior in all aspects, and has close to no adoption with the people who actually MAKE video.

THe only thing this decision has made me do is cross off Chrome from the list of browsers worth considering. If they have a policy of REDUCING FUNCTIONALITY because of political concerns, they are not interested in providing a service but promoting a certain agenda.

Thanks but no thanks. I'm not going to waste my time on it. It is worth more than the miniscule license fees.

Re:This isn't evil.

[Draek]

The first hit is always free.

After that you are stuck with one company who owns the patents to your codec.

WebM is at least independent from any one company.

Fixed that for you.

Of course...

[apt-get moo]

...this is coming from the same company which tried to force their own new hypertext markup language upon the world.

Also, we don't have a single world language in the literal sense, and much less when it comes to video formats. Complaining about a browser (with a 10-12% market share, mind you) not supporting H.264 is like complaining about people on the web who are not speaking English.

Re:If M$ is opposed then we are probably in the ri

[Thugthrasher]

I find it better to look at the content of a decision before I judge it right or wrong, rather than just see who agrees with the decision. Normally I disagree with MS. This time I agree with them.

You hear that Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the worlds smallest violin playing just for you.... if you don't hear that you'll probably need to download an ogg plugin.

Funny

[ledow]

Funny, I don't remember having to pay a licence fee to use English.

Re:Funny

[Celarent Darii]

Yes you did. Every English textbook that you learned English grammar from was the "fee". As was the twelve years of schooling.

But of course some didn't pay the fee, which is why Slashdot has many "licence violations".

Re:Funny

[TaoPhoenix]

to long did'nt read.

Re:Funny

[VGPowerlord]

to long did'nt read.

Yes, illiteracy is the consequence of not paying the English license fee. ;)

Rich

[jav1231]

How many "standards" has Microsoft tried to force upon the industry? Far more than Google. And it's not like you don't have a choice. That's what chaps Microsoft the most, choice. You shouldn't have a choice.

Re:Rich

[ducomputergeek]

In this situation, Microsoft has nothing to do with H.264 other than licensing it. Apple is part of the patent pool. But H.264 became the defacto standard because it was...well technically a lot better with good licensing terms. As someone who worked in video production in the early days of web video when you had to encode videos to at least 3 different formats, I welcomed the day H.264. Most of the pros I know that are still in the business are frankly a little peeved at seeing yet another format war, and as far as their concerned, for no good reason. Especially when they've had a settled standard for the past 5 years: H.264. The last thing they want to see happen is the internet once again require video in 3 different formats.

And to them H.264 is much bigger than just the internet because H.264 is everywhere. It's in their cameras, editing software, DVD players, mobile media players, mobile phones, set top boxes, TV's etc..

Re:Rich

[Ash-Fox]

Most of the pros I know that are still in the business are frankly a little peeved at seeing yet another format war, and as far as their concerned, for no good reason.

We'll have to agree to disagree then, because for me, it is a very good reason.

Re:Rich

[jav1231]

I would agree about the ubiquity of H.264. And it certainly has become pervasive. I know little about working with such formats I just was pointing out the irony of the shoe being on the other foot.

ActiveX all over again?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what it's probably going to look like is this: on one side, you'll have Firefox, Chrome, Opera and so on, supporting free (Free) and open standards; on the other hand, you'll have Microsoft.

Unlike with previous stuff that Microsoft pushed, H.264 is actually good, no doubt about that, but if you can't even put an encoded file on your server without a cartel thinking that you owe them money for every download, then that's enough to not use it.

It's "having a choice", not "war".

[CityZen]

This is software we're talking about. It can do more than one thing.

Standards: Simple Questions

[Bob9113]

There are some simple questions that can make it easy to choose between competing standards.

1. Are they sufficiently similar quantitatively in doing the job?
2. Are they sufficiently similar qualitatively in doing the job?
3. Is anyone allowed to use them without inhibition?

It's not hard. If one of the potential standards satisfies all three of those requirements and the other does not, that is the better standard. Why? Because we strive to be a free market economy. We do that because it is a better answer -- mathematically speaking -- than being a biased-market economy. Free market means satisfying the customers needs (item 1), their wants (item 2), and their freedom to choose (item 3). Competition is one of the pillars of free market efficiency. Encumbered standards create inhibition to competition.

Economically speaking, this is Dick & Jane stuff. The only people who could fail to get it are the ignorant and charlatans.

People should listen to Microsoft

[Dcnjoe60]

"...which likens Google's adoption of WebM instead of H.264 to an attempt to force a new language on the entire world. Internet Explorer 9, of course, supports the H.264 codec,...

People should listen to Microsoft! What better expert is there with regards to forcing things on the entire world?

Obligatory quote

[Emor dNilapasi]

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi

Re:Obligatory quote

[shutdown -p now]

"I am not Gandhi. Who knew??" - an unknown shmuck who did not win.

No.

[unity100]

as a professional web developer who makes his living from web development, i say no to anything that involves internet explorer. internet explorer has accrued so much karma over the torture of web developers trying to make perfectly standard compliant code of websites fit the standards-ignoring whims of internet explorer that, its name is akin to 'plague' in the eyes of long time web developers. couple this with microsoft glorious, glaring, dazzling reputation in regard to open standards and compliance, and you can understand where i am coming from.

'years long standards/format war' ? really ? with what ? internet explorer lost a lot of share to become head to head with firefox. chrome is eroding ie even more. google has much more reach on the web than anything microsoft, because google had come up embracing the web, even to the point of setting up adsense/adwords to enable small websites and advertisers that everyone on the internet was ignoring and snubbing, including microsoft. from webmaster tools to google analytics, and many more. what microsoft has to show against all these ? internet explorer ...

there isnt going to be any format war. microsoft has nothing to wage a war with.

Re:No.

[JasterBobaMereel]

"....it dosn't seem to work in IE ...." is like scratching nails down a blackboard ....

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you were really a professional web developer your reaction would be "crap, now I'll have to have WebM and H.264 encodings for every video I put on the web, [sarcasm] Thanks Google, way to make standards compliance easy [/sarcasm]"

You wouldn't be able to drop H.264 because it's the format of choice for embedded systems which have hardware support for that codec (set top boxes, phones, etc), but now you can't expect that any commercial backed browser will handle H.264 either (because Google decided to be a "hero" and drop support). So you still have to pay the H.264 liscensing fees (by way of Adobe or whoever writes your encoding program of choice), but now you have to keep 2 copies of every video on your server, have to spend more time encoding video (dioing it twice), and you don't actually gain any users (you just fail to loose some of them).

It may be the "right" choice to move towards a more open format, but this will not make things easier on developers in the short term.

Re:No.

[unity100]

If you were really a professional web developer your reaction would be "crap, now I'll have to have WebM and H.264 encodings for every video I put on the web, [sarcasm] Thanks Google, way to make standards compliance easy [/sarcasm]"

first, that goes without saying, second, there wont be any such need since microsoft wont be able to do shit, and webm will be standard soon, third, a professional web developer rarely needs to cope up with encoding of videos, since whatever video that is being used on the web generally comes in the form of embedded videos, most of which are youtube, and the projects which are seeking to set up their own video streaming/storage are rare.

Re:No.

[ducomputergeek]

They problem is that for most videographers, the internet is still a small part of their business if anything. And H.264 plays pretty much everywhere. They can send a file to a client and it will play on a Mac, or a PC, or a set top box, or a mobile phone or a game console, or even on many TV's. Plug in an SD card with H.264 video and it will play on the TV. I remember what it was like during the days of codec hell and trying to get clients to view a video only for them to see "You need to download XYZ Codec" or "ABC Player" to view this video.

Re:No.

[VGPowerlord]

first, that goes without saying, second, there wont be any such need since microsoft wont be able to do shit, and webm will be standard soon

Microsoft browsers. Apple browsers. Apple iOS devices. pre-2.3 Android devices. GoogleTV. PlayStation 3. Xbox 360. Roku boxes.

This is an off-the-top-of-my-head list of software and devices that support H.264 with no built-in support for WebM.

Note: I did have to look up Google TV, but everything I found said it supported H.264 but not WebM.

Re:No.

[unity100]

with firefox and chrome, half of the web traffic will support webm. the rest will have to follow suit. ah, forgot that opera is also ready to do it, and this puts it more than half. maybe to 60%

Re:No.

[LingNoi]

It's Microsoft refusing to support WebM while firefox and opera are doing the exact same thing as Chrome. It's the same old same old IE not supporting shit.

Re:No.

[shutdown -p now]

"Built-in" is not really a problem. If it's not built-in, but it can be easily extended, it's good enough - judging by how Flash is doing today. If e.g. YouTube would switch, you'd just see OEMs preinstalling codecs etc.

Now, we know that IE9 will use WebM if it's installed. And Safari will use any QuickTime codec available. So long as Google provides those two bits, it would seem that the only problem is with Mobile Safari.

Re:No.

[terjeber]

What does this have to do with Internet Explorers. Tell mummy she should not forget to make you take your meds in the morning.

Re:No.

[terjeber]

Again, what does Microsoft have to do with H.264? What meds are you on?

Re:No.

[terjeber]

with firefox and chrome, half of the web traffic will support webm. the rest will have to follow suit

No, they will not. H.264 is not, as you seem to think, a Microsoft product. Neither is it a product mainly for online content. H.264 is a video industry standard, and they invest billions in their stuff. Movie companies invest in encoding technology costing millions of dollars. Cable companies invest millions in hardware that they push to consumers. DSP produces invest millions in research to enable hardware decoding of H.264.

The people who produce and own the content that you want to watch will make this available to you in H.264. It's their choice, not Google's. If you can't watch H.264 you will just have to forget about ESPN and rather go watch a WebM encoded laughing baby instead. Me, I prefer to watch something else, but enjoy your babies and the kittens.

Re:No.

[unity100]

microsoft owns some of the patents behind h264.

Re:No.

[terjeber]

Seriously. You really need to educate your self before making dumb statements like you did. Microsoft has been fighting H.264 as a video standard from the time it was conceived (even though Microsoft is on the comittee). Microsoft has been pushing VC1 over H.264 all the way, and that was, for example, the main reason Microsoft backed HD-DVD over the superior Blu-Ray until long after it was obvious HD-DVD was dead. Microsoft still won't support Blu-Ray for XBOX.

H.264 online has nothing to do with Microsoft. As they say "better to keep your mouth shut and have everyone think you an idiot than to open it and remove all doubt".

Re:No.

[unity100]

you are the one making dumb statements. ill let someone else reply you. and, better to keep your mouth shut, when you are an idiot who thinks the patent game is that simple, like you do.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1949162&cid=34861568

Re:No.

[terjeber]

Have I said H.264 is not encumbered by patents? Nope. Have I said that Microsoft doesn't have patents that are relevant to H.264? No. I know both of these things quite well. I even know a bit about the patents involved, and it is quite possible that some of these patents also cover WebM, though it would take some work and probably legal action to find out.

Neither of these facts are relevant to your dumb-ass comments. Honestely.

If you had a single clue about video and video standards, standards that have "always" been open and that have "always" been governed by international standards bodies, you would know that Microsoft has a favorite video encoder. It is called VC1. You would also know that Microsoft has been trying to get H.264 replaced with VC1 as the industry standard for years. So far with limited success.

Right Decision for Google

[Anonymous Coward]

So I guess Google made the right choice. :D

Forcing new languages ?

[alexhs]

an attempt to force a new language on the entire world.

You mean, like,

• C# ?
• MS Java dialect ?
• IE6 HTML dialect ?
• Silverlight ? ... Wait, just kidding about that one.

Re:Forcing new languages ?

[I8TheWorm]

How are any of those forced?

Re:Forcing new languages ?

[UnknowingFool]

Or formats like ASF, WMF, WMA, or OOXML?

Re:Forcing new languages ?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is Google forcing anything? They are just saying that at this time, they will not support a specific codec for an html tag on a standard that is not yet finished.

Re:Forcing new languages ?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, using C# doesn't really lock you out of anything and isn't an attempt at embrace extend extinguish. It's just a pretty damn solid language.

Re:Forcing new languages ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot Visual Basic.

Re:Forcing new languages ?

[Draek]

Two, MS Java and MS HTML, as neither supported the original, clean standard, only Microsoft's bastardized version of them. Microsoft's C# implementation does support the published standard to the letter, as does Silverlight, though that's unsurprising given that Microsoft wrote the standards themselves. Just like Google did with WebM, while we're at it.

Re:Forcing new languages ?

[I8TheWorm]

MS Java didn't force anybody to use it. It was language support added to Visual Studio. As a matter of fact, nobody I ever knew used it.

Microsoft's implementation of HTML in IE wasn't all that off, it was their jscript and css rendering that were horrible. If you want to talk about forced, those two might fit the bill, as IE had huge market share and web developers/designers had to branch code to work in IE and other browsers.

Silverlight, Flash, AIR.... any of the platform within the browser are all optional, and I treat them (as a developer) as nonexistant. If any developers do use them for the web, they should ALWAYS offer an alternate path with just HTML/CSS/Javascript (unless it's corprate intranet, then I couldn't care less).

Re:Forcing new languages ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget DirectX.

and

msn protocol

Re:Forcing new languages ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're really stretching it at that stage. 4 items in your lists seems much better than the 1, which is what your list should look like. Doofus.

multi-browser

[Tomahawk]

I predict many years of having multiple browsers installed...

wait - I have multiple browsers installed...

So, I predict many years of, effectively, no difference to end users like me.

Patents

[betterunixthanunix]

If only it were a simple matter of technology, we could all agree with you. Unfortunately, H264 is a serious problem in the USA, because of software patents and license requirements. You cannot produce legal free software H264 editors in this country, nor can you import legally produced software from other countries. True, patent trolls will probably find a way to corrupt WebM, but at least they would have to put some effort in.

Re:Patents

[John Betonschaar]

And yet, MPEG-LA has no problem with anyone using x264, and are in fact taking x264 licensees who want to use it in commercial products. Maybe in your head the world will come to an end and everyone will be tricked into paying shitloads of money to MPEG-LA, but in reality, it's just a codec like so many others with patents on them, and despite that are still used and available everywhere, both as open-source and commercial software.

google vs the world

[cosmas_c]

they do not want to kill flash or h264, they want alternatives

Re:google vs the world

[cosmas_c]

ok this post is a reply to this post

they just need to drop flash and H.264 in Youtube

tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1948550&cid=34860346
excuse the confusion ! )(

Of course they would...

[hesaigo999ca]

Of course they would, anytime someone does not follow M$ way of doing things they complain, but when we complain about them not following the rest of the pack for xml OO, they get all bent out of shape....well suck it up M$ you aint the biggest kid in the sandbox anymore....you have to learn to play with others.

A Men In Black reference?

[definate]

A Men In Black reference? Well done good Sir, well done indeed!

Next up, I'd like a Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure reference.

Re:A Men In Black reference?

[lilo_booter]

Everything is different, but the same... things are more moderner than before... bigger, and yet smaller... it's computers... San Dimas High School football rules.

Re:A Men In Black reference?

[X3J11]

You ugly, red, source of all evil!

It works if you picture Steve Ballmer's sweaty, engorged face as he screams "developers!"

Re:A Men In Black reference?

[X3J11]

Replying to myself because, damn it, that's a Bogus Journey reference.

Oh well, I tried.

Re:A Men In Black reference?

[Anonymous Coward]

A Men In Black reference? Well done good Sir, well done indeed!

Next up, I'd like a Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure reference.

Everything is different, but the same... things are more moderner than before... bigger, and yet smaller... it's computers...

Re:A Men In Black reference?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because men in black was the first time anyone ever made a joke about buying the white album again. I'm guessing you're about 22? Philistine.

Both?

[lifewarped]

Cant we just support both and let the real-world usage sort out which is "better"?

Re:Both?

[slim]

I dunno about Google, but the issue for Mozilla Foundation is that by supporting the closed format, you're enabling a two tier web with aspects that users in developing countries etc. won't be able to access. As long as Safari and IE do not support a free codec, kids in Sudan (*) might not be able to encode video for the web. As long as Chrome supports H.264, there's weak incentives for rich people (*) who just want it to work, to move to something else.

(*1) "Kids in Sudan" is a placeholder for whatever poor people you want to consider
(*2) "rich people" relative to the kids in Sudan.

Re:Both?

[tom17]

I fully support googles decision with this, but I still have to play devils advocate here...

These 'kids in Sudan'.. How exactly are they obtaining this video? I assume that they are using some kind of digital video capture device, right? In which case, surely it is recording in an H.264 format as most cheap portable digital video devices record using it. It seems they already had the license by having the camera. Yeah there are older devices that don't record in H.264 (or they record analogue) but they may be more costly to get hold of/repair/digitise than something cheap like an old flip.

Re:Both?

[slim]

OLPC XO Laptop's internal camera?

Just a f'rinstance.

Re:Both?

[Draek]

Actually, kids in Sudan won't have a problem with h.264 as its royalties and the whole licensing mess are only enforceable on countries that support software patents. Meaning the US, and... not much else. So far.

The biggest problem are US-based startups planning on making a new product involving video or online streaming in any form, since they'd have to license a bunch of patents owned by very large corporations that do *not* appreciate competition and that, without WebM, have the means necessary to crush it at will.

Re:Both?

[tom17]

Touche!

News at 11

[Anonymous Coward]

Shock as holders of some H.264 patents, Microsoft and Apple, do everything in their power to get more people to pay them licensing fees. Welcome to the new world where the phrase "open" applies to everything except actual use.

MOD PARENT UP

[cyclomedia]

This is exactly what google's move reminds me of. How many years did us web devs spend banging on about Acid2 before IE finally passed it?

only IE supports h264

[Anonymous Coward]

all the rest ....fgdfgdfgdfg.........fgdfgfdgfdgdfg........dfgdfgdfg.........DON'T USE MASTERCARD

Re:only IE supports h264

[camperslo]

No, there's Safari too

Yeah, but

[Sloppy]

One pundit predicts the battle will lead to yet another 'years-long standards format war.'"

Yeah, but this time, we the people will have someone on our side for a change. Unlike PNG in the mid 1990s and Vorbis around the turn of the century, the implementations we have will be big'n'mainstream. It's nice to not be a marginalized weirdo hermit for a change.

Codecs

[ozbird]

I think I have the wrong audio codec for this article - all I hear is "waaa".

This is deep!

[XB-70]

Firstly, it's great to see Microsoft writing anything that's open (and, yes, I know they have in the past). Secondly, when it comes to standards (non) compliance and forcing others to use languages, their choice of method of attack leaves them incredibly open to ridicule. Yes, it's a war. Yes, the goal is internet dominance. No, they don't stand a chance. The fight will be on the droid/smartphone front, not on the desktop.

2/3=H.246 means ~1/2=Youtube@Google

[roger_pasky]

Let's see how long will remain Youtube in H.264 ;-)

"How DARE they try to force a new language...

[Chris Mattern]

...on the entire world, when that's OUR job!"

What format war? End users will happily play all.

[wvmarle]

I don't see the "format war" potential here.

Format wars were VHS vs Video2000 vs Betamax. BluRay vs HD-DVD. And the losers were primarily the manufacturers that bet on the wrong tech, and the other manufacturers that could barely sell anything before the format was settled on. After all users had to shell out real money in serious amounts to buy one, and even more if they wanted to be compatible with the others. The space taken by an unsightly pile of equipment notwithstanding.

Now H.264 is effectively free for end users. I know there are license fees and whatnot but no end user has ever seen a bill for an H.264 player as far as I am aware. In other words: if it's not already included in your OS, you will be able to download it somewhere, and such an installation is usually very very easy. And has to be done only once. Problem solved.

WebM same story. But without the license fees.

And before anyone starts to complain about "installing so many plug-ins", I'd say many FF users chooses FF for the many plug-ins available. It's just that they're called "add-ons" in newspeak.

So it may be a format war, but for most of the end users there is no difference. Video on the web will just play. Be it in Flash, H.264, WebM, or whatever comes next.

Netcraft confirms it

[cjjjer]

HTML5 video tag is dead... And this is why Flash/Silverlight will still remain the defacto standard for viewing video on the web outside of Youtube.

But all of those can support WebM too.

[Anonymous Coward]

But all of those can support WebM too. So why, since ~30% of the web browsing would be unable to support H264, should we go to it?

Re:But all of those can support WebM too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm.. I assume then that I can send you a bill to change my bluray player, my cellphone, and my video cards to ones that support WebM in hardware?

And what 30% of web browsing would be unable to support H.264? Almost every desktop browser is capable of viewing H.264, some can even do it without using flash as a middle man, and all modern smart phones can decode it in hardware as well. Moving to WebM would mean we would have to throw away every cell phone currently out there, or have their batteries lasting a *LOT* shorter.

If I had to pay royalties to speak English...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I would probably switch to Esperanto.

a little bit biased?

[devent]

Shouldn't be MS in favor of dropping H246 and support WebM? Sure it's from Google, but WebM is free, meaning they don't have to pay any cent to MPEG LA. Oh wait, MS is a member of MPEG LA, so if everyone is using WebM then MPEG LA and thus MS don't get a dime from the internet. Aren't they a little bit biased to accept their arguments?

Re:a little bit biased?

[BitZtream]

MS owns some of the h264 patents.

They get money for each license sold, why would they want to support WebM which will give them no money and they have absolutely no control over.

h264 is controlled by many companies that all have to agree in order for something to change.

WebM is controlled by one that doesn't have to wait for anyone to make a change, they can do it on a whim.

Isn't it cute....

[Requiem18th]

I mean, YouTube has users far in excess to Apple, let alone iPhones. Actually I wouldn't be surprised if there are YouTube *channels* with more subscribers than there are Apple users.

The moon has turned red...

[CAIMLAS]

Wow, I can't believe it.

Is Microsoft actually arguing for a real, actual standard in the face of two 'open source' centric companies, which are pushing their "own thing"? This is hard to fathom, particularly since there is fairly wide adoption of H.264 already - transitioning to 'standard' HTML5 H264 for many sites won't be as difficult, because the media encoding is already being done as such already for (say) flash.

What am I missing?

Ideology vs Practicality

[Kenshin]

This is what bugs me the most about Google abandoning H.264.

They're a bunch of ideological zealots saying "Screw your phone, screw your iPod, screw your video card, screw your laptop, screw your PS3, screw all your expensive hardware that supports H.264. We're switching to WebM. It offers no real-world benefits over H.264, but it's OPEN!"

At the risk of sounding like a bitter old man, that's a load of fucking hippie bullshit.

Google can feel good about themselves for being "open", and save a few cents in the process, but all my hardware, which did its job perfectly, now won't. (That, and we won't see hardware supporting WebM until somewhere in 2012.)

Re:Ideology vs Practicality

[LingNoi]

All of that shit you listed you won't be using by the time webM gets popular (if ever). It'll take another 5 years before HTML 5 even gets standardised at least.

Re:Ideology vs Practicality

[idlehanz]

At the risk of sounding like a bitter old man, that's a load of fucking hippie bullshit.

I say we get Cartman on the job. He f'in HATES hippies. :-)

Re:Ideology vs Practicality

[TheTyrannyOfForcedRe]

You have a five digit slashdot id and you're pissed off that your electronic toys are going to be obsolete in a year or two? Seriously?

Re:Ideology vs Practicality

[Anonymous Coward]

> This is what bugs me the most about Google abandoning H.264.
> They're a bunch of ideological zealots saying "Screw your phone, screw your iPod, screw your
> video card, screw your laptop, screw your PS3, screw all your expensive hardware that
> supports H.264. We're switching to WebM.

ideological zealot: someone who doesn't suck your 5+ favorite cocks, and dares to "compete" by doing their own thing.

> It offers no real-world benefits over H.264, but
> it's OPEN!"
You live in a different world than I do.

> At the risk of sounding like a bitter old man, that's a load of fucking hippie bullshit.
I'm sorry your revolution failed. You got a lot of nice toys though, huh?

> Google can feel good about themselves for being "open", and save a few cents in the process,
> but all my hardware, which did its job perfectly, now won't. (That, and we won't see hardware
> supporting WebM until somewhere in 2012.)
So...you bought shitty hardware that can't be upgraded to support more things...and you blame someone who didn't make your hardware?

You are not a bitter old man, you are a spoiled kid.

Gimme gimme now! I can't wait until 2012! Fuck the next generation! I want to play with my toys!

Re:Ideology vs Practicality

[Xarius]

Okay, fair points but you do realise the devices you listed would only need a trivial software update to work with WebM--not to mention on the "phone" side of things Google pretty much has Android covered, with a pretty large market share.

Sorry, they aren't web browsers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, they aren't web browsers. How about I send YOU a bill so you can change my DVD player, my OS and my Videocards so it supports H.264 in hardware? Oh, and all IE pre-9 users will want to have you chip in.

Cheers very much.

w3c

[Gripp]

seems as simple as which ever the w3c supports to me. if it ends up supporting both, then all browsers should be capable of both.

h.264 is about broadcasting

[SuperKendall]

H264 is the last in the line that started with Edison's phonograph, a mental world where there are a few big broadcasters and millions of passive "consumers".

That is bullshit, because right now THE standard for personal broadcasting is h.264.

And it's for the same reason it's so popular for playing videos - hardware support.

There are tens of millions of mobile devices recording direct to h.264. On the iPhone you even have a movie editing suite to cut that how you like, and then send it out to someone - the ultimate in personal broadcasting. And THAT my friend, is all done with h.264.

As for the "running expense" of browsers, so is development of new browser features. Should they then give those up as well? I would argue that in fact h.264 playback is going to be used by more browser users than any one new feature should be, so if the goal was to reduce recurring costs then they should scale back on development if a choice must be made!

There is no choice though, as others have said this is all about Google moving away from a format controlled by open standards, to one they control.

Re:h.264 is about broadcasting

[hitmark]

"That is bullshit, because right now THE standard for personal broadcasting is h.264.

And it's for the same reason it's so popular for playing videos - hardware support."

Circular logic, as hardware support basically had to come into existence once big media decided to make it its codec of choice.

Re:h.264 is about broadcasting

[SuperKendall]

Circular logic, as hardware support basically had to come into existence once big media decided to make it its codec of choice.

Does it matter WHY it came into existence, when the FACT is that it's at the core of huge personal publishing platform now?

It's not circular, it's a chicken and egg issue. the FACT is that right now millions of people are eating metaphorically tasty chicken broadcast sandwiches without knowing or caring if the egg or chicken came first.

You simply cannot label h.264 as "for consumption only" at this point with a straight face.

Re:h.264 is about broadcasting

[hkmwbz]

That is bullshit, because right now THE standard for personal broadcasting is h.264.

But not for the web. There's no video standard for the web. Webm will hopefully become it.

There are tens of millions of mobile devices recording direct to h.264.

And none of them will be published without being converted by video hosting services. So they might as well convert to webm.

Re:h.264 is about broadcasting

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, the people are also obliviously eating a metaphorically tasty chicken broadcast sandwich that at any time that the chicken farmer feels like it can become toxic.

If Youtube and other consumer enabling platforms start to become a big enough threat to the backing group of the MPEG-LA group, you can be sure that they will do something about it.
Also, it isn't strange that Apple and Microsoft still want to keep H.264 around, instead of WebM. They own patents on the technology, and reap the benefits of the licensing. Even if the license is forever free on the player side, they still get money from all the equipment.
And heaven forbid should you ever make a video that turns so successful that you would want to ask money for it. You then will have to start paying right away.

Also, funny how Microsoft once compared GPL to being cancerous for infecting everything it touched, but now the H.264 license basically does the same or worse. Regardless of the eventual format, if you media was ever, in whatever way, encoded as H.264, you owe them money.

Crappier if you can

[SuperKendall]

If your "iGadgets" can't be updated with software to support new codecs or variations in existing codecs, then I fear you have already wasted your money on crappy technology.

If your gadget of choice relies on software instead of dedicated hardware for media playback, then I know you have wasted your money on crappy technology.

YouTube Death knell ?

[crmarvin42]

Ok, so if Chrome is no longer going to support H.264 then it won't be able to support YouTube except via Flash. Google already has to pay the maximum licensing fee's possible to MPEG-LA for the H.264 encoded YouTube video, so dropping support in Chrome won't save them any money unless they also replace all of their streaming video with WebM transcodes. If they require all YouTube streaming to be done in WebM, I certainly won't be going there.

Chrome for Mac, at least in my experience, does not perform as I expect any program to on my platform (mac). Most keyboard short-cuts (Command + H to Hide, Command + M to minimize the window, etc.) don't work for me. That's very basic, and universal functionality that is broken on a platform that prides itself on polish. (I admit that I'm probably the minority in noticing this, most people I know don't use many keyboard shortcuts, instead favoring the mouse for EVERYTHING.)

I see this as blantant and Microsoftesque attempt to control the standards process for their own gain. I don't take moral umbrage with that kind of manuver like many /. denizens, but I can't see how anyone can pretend that Google is trying to be altruistic, and doing things for the "Good of the Open Net". As the Arstechinica article on the topic points out, H264 is an open (although not royalty-free) standard, whereas WebM is royalty-free (for the moment), but not an open standard.

P.S. is anyone else having trouble pasting url's into the editing window? I tried in 2 different browsers unsuccessfully to past the url for the arstechnica piece. Instead of accepting the Paste the cursor jumped ahead the appropriate number of characters without changing the text inside the editor window.

Re:YouTube Death knell ?

[shutdown -p now]

Ok, so if Chrome is no longer going to support H.264 then it won't be able to support YouTube except via Flash.

Have you been living under the rock for the last year? YouTube HTML5 beta has been streaming WebM for a while now, and Google says that 90% of all videos are already transcoded. If they say that they'll remove H.264 in Chrome "in a few months", it's probably when HTML5 support goes out of beta on YouTube.

If they require all YouTube streaming to be done in WebM, I certainly won't be going there.

They will still be serving it in Flash for a long time. That said, Adobe said they're going to support WebM in Flash...

and the winner is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

may the winer be, whatever uses less resources!!!

Who cares

[the100rabh]

Who cares which codec is being used as long as Firefox, Chrome, Flash and YouTube support it perfectly well.

MS and Apple are stuck in their world and dont want progress in this field or maybe they have ulterior motives. Yeah they are the losers from the last century for sure.

Re:What format war? End users will happily play al

[sjames]

The only reason end users aren't having to pay for H.264 is that they're pirating it! Google is just doing their part to stamp out piracy.

Vimeo

[SideshowBob]

I don't know what Microsoft would say, but I bet Vimeo would be thrilled.

Chrome OS

[spikesahead]

I think this is a move in line with Chrome OS. They want to make sure they don't have to pay anyone in order to distribute this as an operating system.

As a proud owner of a CR-48, it IS a nifty little device and Google's first stab out into the desktop operating system realm. It only makes sense for them to rely on their wholly owned solutions rather than entrapping themselves into paying a royalty fee to distribute it.

Whence Chrome OS goes, desktop Chrome will follow, the two are designed to have a completely uniform look, feel, and function, in essence not being two at all but simply different aspects of a single whole.

See wikibooks:English Grammar

[tepples]

Every English textbook that you learned English grammar from was the "fee".

They're working on fixing that.

WebM patent story unclear

[slew]

If you look at WebM's VP8 codec (the only one that matters), you'll see it's quite similar to MPEG4-pt2 (the original MPEG4 instead of pt10 which is H.264). If you look at the MPEG-LA (the patent-pool/licensing authority for the "patented" codecs), you might notice a few patents that seem to cover some aspects for the VP8 algorithm. Well, it's never been tested in court to see if VP8 actually reads on any those patents (or even ones that aren't part of the patent-pool), so it a bit premature to assert that WebM's VP8 is somehow non-patented and allowing for greater innovation than H.264.

As usual, the headlines aren't really the whole story. This whole thing may just be FUD, but making this about free-vs-paid is really just a disservice. Both are currently free, both have a patent cloud. The only thing that is true is that some corporations like MPEG-LA's business model, and some other folks want to go it with Google on their side (even though both sides said that they aren't indemnifying anyone for patent infringement). Both MPEG-LA and Google are out to make money. They just want to do it a different way.

Sadly Google's move doesn't really help consumers much at all. H.264 isn't going away overnight so for the forseeable future, consumer devices will probably all have to support H.264 and thus the potential "free-ness" of the WebM/VP8 doesn't reduce anyone's cost basis, but it adds to it (now they will just have to support H.264 and WebM/VP8 on their devices). It probably saves Google some money (maybe they don't have to support both), but this is just like Apple not supporting Flash to try to save a few bucks and strong arm the marketplace, replace Apple with Google and Flash with H.264. How is this additional cost fostering growth and innovation? There may be other principles involved, but growth, innovation, and paid are all red herrings in this fight...

Re:WebM patent story unclear

[spinkham]

Remember, this isn't just about WebM. At least Theora, WebM, and Dirac are candidates at this stage. WebM is currently the front runner or course, but it's not what we must be stuck with for the next 50 years.

There's been Theora patent FUD for 6 years now, and no action. There's been WebM patent FUD for 6 months now, no action. WebM has been under development (as VP8) since 2008 at least. I'm pretty sure they would have done a very careful patent search as part of the development, and Google would have done the same when they bought and later freed it. There are a lot of similar parts, but they seem to have tiptoed around the actual patents in a number of ways, some of which do have minor quality impacts that show avoiding the patents was their concern.

So, FUD away, but one is patent unencumbered as far as we can tell, and one is definitely patented.

Also, from the cost perspective you only mentioned the consumer side.. I could care less what Google, Apple, MS have to pay for licenses. What I care about is the freedom to make and sell or give away whatever tech or content I want. That's where innovation comes from, individuals and companies coming up with new ideas, testing those ideas, and a few of them taking off. Patented standards limit this kind of innovation. I should be able to test ideas in my garage and build a new technology, without having to hire a lawyer as my first employee.

DVD was using MPEG-2 in 1996

[tepples]

MPEG2? *bzzzzzzzzt* 2023.

I thought DVD was using MPEG-2 in 1996 and patents lasted only 20 years. What MPEG-2 patents expire in 2023 and not before or during 2016?

There is a standard

[SuperKendall]

But not for the web. There's no video standard for the web. Webm will hopefully become it.

h.264 has become the de-facto standard for the web, because you can use it in Flash players, and it works on any iOS device.

And none of them will be published without being converted by video hosting services.

To h.264 if you take a look at what the Flash is wrapping. They are just transcoding to lower bitrates or resolutions.

And there's a lot of h.264 specific software and devices for that also...

Re:There is a standard

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a standard, and it's WebM.

Most of the maths is already accelerated by hardware that accelerates h.264. And out of all the systems looking at the internet, a very small minority have such hardware.

To use h.264 when WebM is the standard, you can use flash. So why are you so pissed off that WebM become the standard? You're still going to have h.264 playback for files in that format.

And, no, there aren't "a lot of devices" for h.264. It's a tiny fraction. And, as said before, most of them can accelerate the lion's share of WebM just as well as it does h.264, therefore the hardware is just as available for WebM, making that no discriminator.

PS: most coding you'll see on video sites with h.264 is with the low or medium quality settings where WebM and h.264 are indistinguishable.

Re:There is a standard

[hkmwbz]

h.264 has become the de-facto standard for the web, because you can use it in Flash players, and it works on any iOS device.

Flash video could use any format, so that's irrelevant. This is about native video support in browsers, not plugins.

To h.264 if you take a look at what the Flash is wrapping. They are just transcoding to lower bitrates or resolutions.

The point is that they are converting even h264, so they might as well convert to a free and open format.

Figures.

[arisvega]

No grounds to sue, so all there's left is crying about it.

Look who got all high and mighty

[BumpyCarrot]

Anybody who's ever tried setting Word's dictionary to anything but "Microsoft English" will appreciate the hypocrisy.