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Google To Push WebM With IE9, Safari Plugins
surveyork writes with this "new chapter in the browser wars: 'Google in a defense of its decision to pull H.264 from Chrome's HTML5 revealed that it will put out WebM plugins for Internet Explorer 9 and Safari. Expecting no official support from Apple or Microsoft, Google plans to develop extensions that would load its self-owned video codec. No timetable was given.' So Google gets started with their plan for world-wide WebM domination. They'll provide WebM plugins for the browsers of the H.264-only league, so in practice, all major browsers will have WebM support — one way or the other. Machiavellian move?"
How sinister of them, trying to compete with a proprietary codec by releasing free plugins for other vendors' browsers to play their unencumbered format.
Look out Lex Luthor, Eric Schmidt is stealing your schtick.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
..Microsoft responds by releasing an H.264 plugin for Chrome
After all, we've seen how Silverlight has come to dominate the web.
#DeleteChrome
So lets recap:
* Mozilla and Google push for a video tag in HTML that is unencumbered by patents. Apple and Microsoft will not go along.
* Google acquires On2, and promotes it as an open standard, including promises to defend it in court.
* Google promises to release plugins that allow IE9 and Safari to decode their codec in the two browsers which won't support it natively. No one is forced to use their open standard, but it is now an option across all browsers that implement the video tag.
If buying a codec so you can open it, make it freely available to everyone, and defend it from patent attack is Machiavellian, than how would you describe Apple and Microsoft's work to make sure the only way to play a video is the use of a proprietary format?
Why not take the easy way, and buy Microsoft and apple?
MPEG-LA isn't meant primarily to generate a profit, it's a collaboration of many patent holders who have pooled their patents to create a legal, high quality, open, widely supported video codec that they can all use, preventing a slew of inferior, proprietary incompatible video formats from each company. MPEG-LA, and their members, primarily want a codec that can be more or less used universally. It's not in their best interest to become "patent trolls" and sue people not making money off of their patents.
On the other hand, it's very much in their interest to sue large companies that are deliberately pissing in their pool, like Google.
As a consumer, H.264 is pretty much perfect. It essentially comes free with everything I own, costs me nothing to use on the web, is universally supported, and runs smoothly and sips power on all my devices. Of those, WebM only does the "costs me nothing to use on the web".
On paper, WebM is inferior technology. In theory, WebM's license is superior. But in actual, present reality, H.264 is really the best thing out there, and WebM is just not compelling enough to overturn the consumer apple cart in order to cater to the ideological whims of a small minority of consumers.
IIRC it also costs oodles for licensing for those making browsers, which in turn raises the costs of making a browser, which in turns hurts competition.
Firefox has h264 added on with the MS WMP plugin, IE and Safari will get WebM via the Google plugin. Only Chrome doesn't have h264.
Foot, meet gun.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
> MPEG-LA isn't meant primarily to generate a profit...
Horseshit. It's purpose is to maximize the profits of the members.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
And there is the crux of the issue: Assuming a strong distinction between consumer and producer, there's no problem. But anyone astride the cusp between the two is vulnerable to fees that could stop them from distributing a popular video made with H.264. People have already testified here that once the license regime kicks in (for distribution above a certain number) they suddenly gain the interest of the licensing body and have no choice but to pay or to stop distributing the video.
The idea that video content is made solely for profit is the worm in the middle of this particular apple. And it's likely why Google, with their huge investment in Youtube, want to give their users an alternative.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
We learned an important and valuable lesson with MSIE and HTML. We learned that Microsoft's implementation of HTML/CSS is very, very broken. However, because at one time, the majority of users used MSIE, web developers needed to design their content primarily for MSIE. And since the majority of content was for MSIE, users mostly used MSIE. And because most users used MSIE, content was designed for MSIE... and so on and so on in that looping fashion.
So, with HTML5, we have a chance to start anew. We should ALL be adhering to the same standards so that everyone gets a fair shake. But already, there is positioning, posturing, claim staking and all manner of politics threatening the HTML5 fresh start.
Google wants a good cleam fresh start. Why? Because they are primarily content providers, that's why. Their stake is more closely aligned with the users of the internet as we share a common interest -- good, usable content, without irregularities or problems. Good for us; good for Google.
So Google, with this move, is trying to break the looping cycle I described above. If the most commonly supported format out there is WebM, the content creators will design for the most commonly supported format! It will not matter if browsers also support a second format, only that WebM is supported.
Now will Microsoft and even Apple play the "only MSIE/Safari is supported" game with their content? Most definitely. There is still room for the other players to spoil it for everyone else. But this is a pretty good strategy to get content creators to help break the cycle before it starts.
What, like this:
mp3 is not free..
http://mp3licensing.com/royalty/emd.html
h.264 is not free:
http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/h264-royalties-what-you-need-to-know.html
mpeg2 is not free:
http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/M2/Pages/Agreement.aspx
(how do I make a proper link here - without the whole url showing up?)
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Google is exhibiting reckless behaviour because they think they're invincible, and it's all going to come back and bite them in the ass really soon:
1) Google "borrowing" Overture's ad-search business model, and paying them off not to sue them. I guess they got away with this one.
2) Google "borrowing" Sun's Java patented IP for use in Android/Dalvik with a Java-like language because they didn't want to pay for J2ME, not to mention the GPL code they slapped with an Apache license header. Oracle is fending to get payback, and I believe this case will be settled with Google either paying off Oracle with lots of money, or joining OpenJDK and paying license fees to Oracle.
3) GoogleTV, which is an attempt to serve ads over cable companies' signals. The cable companies are now blocking GoogleTV.
4) Google picking stupid fights with former partner Apple, including Android, NexusOne, Chrome and ChromeOS, leading Apple to develop iAd and go after HTC and others for patent infringement.
5) Google's end run around H.264's patents with a similar patent-encumbered codec simply to prop up Flash and screw up Apple serving H.264. Again, Apple is getting payback.
6) Google coming out with ChromeOS, Google Docs and corporate Google Mail. Microsoft hit back with Bing (although I don't see how this will succeed)
7) Google allying themselves with Adobe, having been a staunch supporter of web standards but now bundling Flash. If Flash won't cut it on mobile devices, as it still performs poorly on anything besides Windows and in 32 bit.
The day of reckoning is coming for Google because the world of computing is shifting away from the desktop at a rapid rate, and if Apple's iPad wins, then Google's ad revenue will dry up at the expense of iOS.
Let me be clear that I don't support software patents. Unfortunately, that's the way the game is played, this is accepted by all parties involved with large investments of capital made with an understanding of , and Google is trying to cheat. What goes around comes around, and Google is in for a rude awakening.
This space left intentionally blank.
DivX HiQ already does cross-browser H.264 in MKV/MP4/MOV with MP3 and AAC support, and ASP in AVI/DivX.
http://labs.divx.com/node/14711
It also supports DXVA acceleration for H.264, and it's available on Mac too. It's still in beta and has its quirks but given the discussion I'm surprised it's not mentioned more :)
So.. I guess Chrome Frame was a success then? Strangely how the stats don't reflect that at all.
so let's see how the future will play out then...
On one side of the ring: H.264
* Solid native support on the default browser of Windows - IE9.
* Solid native support on the default browser of OSX - Safari.
* Solid support on the rest of the browsers via the ubiquitous (95%+) and well known by the public Flash player.
* Native support on mobiles.
* Formally approved standard by ISO and IEC
* Guaranteed free distribution on the web for free content, minor free for paid content.
* Vast amounts of existing H.264 content, widely used in video editing apps, broadcasting, recording motion cameras and so on.
On the other side of the ring: WebM
* No native support on the default browser of Windows - IE9.
* No native support on the default browser of OSX - Safari.
* Solid native support on the rest of the browsers.
* Spotty support on only some mobiles (don't expect it on Apple devices, Microsoft is on the fence).
* Not formally approved standard by anybody, just an open code dump at this point.
* Free to use, but questionable future if challenged by MPEG LA and others.
* Almost no existing WebM content, spotty or missing support in video editing apps, not used in broadcasting, not used in motion cameras and so on.
So uhmm, yeah, Google. I wish you guys good luck.
Actually yes, auto-update can be easily disabled and no, they do not have any control over what you do with your browser once it's on your PC. You PC isn't an iPhone and Chrome isn't Steam, so it can't automatically uninstall nor does Chrome tries to validate itself with Google in order to work, at least not without liborwell present. Also, lo and behold: http://www.oldapps.com/google_chrome.php Chrome since version 1.0.
I think you might be surprised what supports OGG. It never says it on the box or, when it comes to car stereos, on the faceplate, but sometimes it is there. My car stereo that supports USB plays ogg, and it surprised me when it worked because there is no information anywhere that it would. It's free so it simply gets put in, and maybe in some cases the bozos in management don't even know it.
WebM will be supported by all important video editing applications in the near future.
Clever signature text goes here.
No. It is because, ATSC was defined before H.264 was. DVB is newer and supports H.264. ATSC technically added support for H.264 in 2008, but nobody is using it because TV sets that don't support H.264 would be left in the dark unless we had a whole new round of stupid converter boxes. We will be stuck with MPEG-2 for broadcast TV for the next 50-80 years; just as long as good old NTSC held on before biting the dust.
The summary makes it out to be some kind of subtle plot on the part of Google. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact what Google is doing is plain as day. They are trying to convert the whole of the web over to WebM and VP8, formats they control. This gives them an advantage, I don't even really blame them for trying. In fact had they done this a few years later I'd be in support of it from the standpoint of trying to establish a more open video format/codec.
At the moment though, the industry is trying to get people behind HTML5 including the video tag. Googles premature move to try to get everyone behind VP8 means that no sane content provider or web site would support the video tag, since it's such a mess as to what browsers will support BY DEFAULT. You can build all the plugins you like, but you can't force people to install them and you certainly cannot deploy them to iOS devices.
So with this early move, Google has screwed over two groups. Those who wanted to see HTML5 video tag advanced, and those who wanted to push for a truly open codec. Yes, this move harms VP8 by insuring that most sites across the web will use Flash players, and following logically from that will only encode in h.264. After all, if you only need to encode once why would you bother with another format?
If they had waited to get the video tag established, for Chrome to gain even more marketshare (it has a really good momentum), to get solid hardware support lined up for VP8 playback/encoding (because people encode movies on devices too), and for Android to get a huge mass of devices in peoples hands. THEN at that point, Google could do what they are now, say that Android is not supporting h.264 and neither is Chrome - and basically force dual encoding on content providers, and eventually other browser and device makers (like Apple) might well convert to WebM.
See, the term "Machiavellian" implies a crafty and ruthless plan involving many prongs. I have outlined one such above. But what Google is doing now, is not Machiavellian in the slightest. It is the tantrum of a three-year old demanding that everyone use Googles codec NOW, users and HTML5 and content provider storage/encoding costs be damned.
I have backed Google many times in the past, said that basically they were a good company at heart. I still think they are but for the setback they have caused in forcing us all into a new dark age of flash players for video across the web - for that, I have dropped Chrome, and switched all my default search engines to Bing *shudder*. I think Google has somehow totally lost focus on what is good for the industry or the consumer, and are going totally now for what is good for Google and no-one else.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
if what you're saying is true, why didn't they just make it open, maybe with a foundation in charge of certifying different implementations ?
what do you mean by "pissing in their pool" ? do you mean competing ? is that a bed thing now ? or illegal ?
my take is the patent holder are out to make money. they can't really make it off of the consumer, client side, so they're reluctantly making it free as in beer, in order to safeguard their business-side revenue. and they may change their mind at any later date about the special terms under which x.264 is for now allowed to be used to for free in certain specific cases.
you're wrong to think that h.264 comes for free. your devices' manufacturers have had to pay royalties, which are reflected in the price you paid for the devices.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
If you own a digital camera with video capability (how many don't?), the H.264 codec owners are not your friends. What's funny is that a lot of prosumer and low-end commercial cameras have this built in, meaning if you use the cameras for their announced purpose, you just might have a confrontation with the MPEG-LA people in your future. So transcode (Web-M, I suppose) before distributing. IMO, we as consumers are best off if H.264 dies and this time around, Google's efforts deserve our support.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Sorry, but I agree with John Hasler, its horseshit. The MPEG-LA is designed to control and maximize profits. And they use their size and power to prevent others from trying to rise against them. Things like this were mentioned here on /. months ago when it was pointed out about video recording camera's and all of them using x264. Try buying a video camera that doesn't use either x264 or mpeg2 video codecs. Every major video camera maker, and just about every minor one uses these codecs. So when you buy them, you have to pay the royalty fees. That would be what I would consider maximizing profits. There are other codecs that would work just as great and are flexible and free to use (like Googles own WebM as an example) but the owners of the other codecs don't have the muscle of MPEG-LA, so they get strangled out so the MPEG-LA, and only MPEG-LA, is profiting from digital video codec sales. It also gives the MPEG-LA power over how people use the videos they make. According to the licensing of x264, you will also need an additional license to use your digital video commercially, and since any video made with a digital video recording (becoming quite the norm with most people) that means that MPEG-LA yet again has their fingers in the pie for more money. It doesn't matter if you later transfer the video to a different codec that is free since at one point of the making of the video it was done in MPEG-LA's codec so they are entitled to their fee's. (While the MPEG-LA has stated that you don't need an extra license to shoot commercial video with h.264 cameras, that doesn't hold any weight since it says you do in the license agreement and in the eyes of the law, the license agreement is what the reality is).
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
Do people think before posting idiotic comments like this?
My Mac already has many codecs installed that Apple doesn't officially support. Nothing Apple can do about it. What's one more?
What incentive would MS or Apple have in blocking it?
Define "important" & "near".
MPEG-LA isn't meant primarily to generate a profit
Maximizing profit is a core goal of the MPEG-LA. From http://www.mpegla.com/main/Pages/About.aspx (emphasis mine):
"Our goal is to provide a service that brings all parties together so that technical innovations can be made widely available at a reasonable price. Utilizing our collaborative approach, we help make markets for intellectual property that maximize profits for intellectual property owners and make utilization of intellectual property affordable for manufacturers, consumers and other users."
I'm sorry but it just seems like you have no real idea what you're talking about.
The more things change, they more they stay the same. Once upon a time, we used to visit webpages and were told that we needed to download Real Player to view the content on the page. Then we needed QuickTime. Then we needed Flash. Now we are going to need WebM.
In the end, it doesn't matter what the browser vendors want to include with the browser. It will come down to the content providers and whether or not their content is compelling. If they are offering what consumers want, consumers will download whatever plugin they need. Downloading plugins is an established behavior.
The only group who will be affected by this at all are the developers. They have to make the choice as to what video encoding scheme they want to use for their applications. So developers out there, how many of you care? On one hand you know that if you go with H.264, all IE and Safari users (read 90%+ of computer users) will be able to view your content without downloading a plugin. You will miss out Chrome users (assuming nobody comes out with an H.264 plugin for Chrome). On the other hand, you can choose WebM and presumably avoid the spectre of maybe, possibly, one day (but not very likely) having to pay royalities on H.264. You end up with some portion of the 90% of the market who are willing to download a plugin. Which do you choose? Or more realistically, which one does your employer hoist on you?
I don't know what you drugs you might be on but I want some. Since when have Microsoft and Apple been Google's friends? Microsoft and Google started a little cold war around the time Google first became a verb, and it became a hot war with the release of Bing. They have been slugging it out ever sense and this is just another round. Apple and Google have not exactly been at each others throats they way Google and Microsoft has but the have very different interests, Google wants the browser to be the Application, Apple wants to essentially go back to the way things were in the early days and push a bunch of tiny network aware Apps. Only this time Apple wants to sell you those Apps, and wants you to search for them in their App store. That does not leave much room for Google, who wants you doing as much as possible on the Web.
I don't think Google has a bad relationship with the Mozilla foundation, I guess Chrome is competition but I doubt there is much anger over it. Google has done a lot to boost Mozilla.org products over the years and if anything I am sure Mozilla sees this push for WebM as a big plus. They can't ship a built in H.264 decoder but they can ship WebM so as a user I am pretty happy about this and I would guess the developers are too.
I don't care to speculate about MPEG LA, I don't know about and history Google has with them. What I am saying is that I don't see this impacting the landscape much with regard to who Google's friends and foes are or even who is ambivalent. It might raise they stakes with some but only where they were already high.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Sure it is. It is meant to generate profit by putting up a barrier to entry into that market. This limits competition which raises prices and of course profit.
They already did. Notice the hundreds of millions of iOS devices that Apple won't let you install any plug in for Mobile Safari.
Apple is gonna fight against WebM every step of the way. So will many others. All Google is doing is prolonging the use of Flash.
If you have any ads on your page, even if you are using using just ad words and you show that video it might be argued you are using it commercially.
No. The license only demands fees if you actually charge for individual works (such as how iTunes sells TV shows). Ads are perfectly fine.
You just being an apologist because you bought a bunch of h.264 toys.
No. I support it because it's superior. And it's not being an apologist if the thing you are supporting is superior in the manner in which you are supporting it.
You, on the other hand, are an apologist for the inferior WebM codec, simply because it's ideologically compatible with you. There is absolutely no way whatsoever in which WebM is superior to H.264 except in terms of licensing. You probably supported Theora with the same fervor and for the same reasons.
You know we are right that h.264 could be dangerous.
I never said otherwise. But "could be dangerous" is a shitty way to live life. It's *not* dangerous, and MPEG-LA has made statements to allay any fears of it becoming dangerous in the future, and the members of MPEG-LA have a strongly vested interest in H.264 not becoming dangerous.
WebM can be just as dangerous as H.264, and you and your fellow apologists (notice the context which makes this term proper) gloss over this. MPEG-LA has already claimed that WebM most likely infringes upon their patents. If you adopt it, you risk a danger that is actually likely and in MPEG-LA's interest, as opposed to an imaginary danger which makes no sense other than to provide a paranoia-induced boogie man for which to scare people into supporting inferior codecs, since telling them that "it's Open Source!" is insufficient to do so.
Try buying a video camera that doesn't use either x264 or mpeg2 video codecs. Every major video camera maker, and just about every minor one uses these codecs.
That's the whole point of creating a standard high quality codec. Would you rather Sony, Olympus, etc., all have their own incompatible formats? What's worse, is these formats would be limited in quality by lack of licensing of patents.
By pooling their patents, a codec which is legal, high quality, and universally supported is possible.
So when you buy them, you have to pay the royalty fees. That would be what I would consider maximizing profits.
How is the free choices of other, non-MPEG-LA members an example of MPEG-LA maximizing their profits?
Sony pays more to license H.264 than they receive in royalties from their licensing fees, by definition. So how is this Sony maximizing their profits? Wouldn't it be better to use their own, proprietary codec?
It would be more profitable, but it would not be better. They tried that with ATRAC and UMD and it didn't work. What *does* work is having an open format which is high quality and universally supported.
As I mentioned, it strangled out competition so that MPEG-LA, and ONLY MPEG-LA is profiting from this. It kills any form of competition which is never a good thing. It has been shown numerous times in numerous business fields. And what good does a free to use codec do? It allows people to use their videos and try to make money from their hard work without having to pay even more money on top of their investment of the tools they already paid for or worry about it being denied. If I made a for-profit movie that shows the downfalls of relying upon the MPEG-LA's licensed technologies and promote free to use ones, I'm likely to have the MPEG-LA want to figure out a legal way to refuse it which would cause me to lose time and money, a risk I shouldn't have to worry about. And there is always other problems. Without competition, a company won't bother to improve their products to the extent that it can be because that costs money.
There are other codecs that would work just as great and are flexible and free to use (like Googles own WebM as an example) but the owners of the other codecs don't have the muscle of MPEG-LA, so they get strangled out so the MPEG-LA, and only MPEG-LA, is profiting from digital video codec sales.
Google can join MPEG-LA. And to assert that WebM would work "just as great" is absolute bullshit at this point in time. A standard that is widely supported is far superior to even a better format that is poorly supported. Doubly so when it comes to battery life of handheld devices. But WebM isn't even technologically better in any way. H.264 is superior. The *only* thing WebM has on H.264 is its licensing arrangement (and even that's dubious given the likelihood of it infringing upon MPEG-LA's patents).
To start with, there is no real reason that Google should have to agree to MPEG-LA's rules if they don't want to. Nor is h.264 superior, as tests have shown that they are neck to neck (with WebM's code not being optimized). The only times h.264 was done better was went it was assisted by the GPU which isn't in most mobile devices. Now as WebM becomes more mature and optimized, it might very well be a more superior.
It also gives the MPEG-LA power over how people use the videos they make. According to the licensing of x264, you will also need an additional license to use your digital video commercially, and since any video made with a digital video recording (becoming quite the norm with most people) that means that MPEG-LA yet again has their fingers in the pie for more money.
Big deal. If you are using your video commerc
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
MPEG-4 isn't h.264. MPEG-4 is MPEG-4. Different codec from the same group. Would be why you would have to transcode it into h.264.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
H.264 official name is MPEG-4 AVC. DivX/XviD/H.263 official name is MPEG-4 ASP. MVC official name is MPEG-4 MVC. In other words, H.264 is part of the MPEG-4 moniker, and is closely related to MPEG-4 ASP and also MPEG2 (used in DVD/Blu-ray etc.).
MJPEG (which the camera uses) is not MPEG-4. That camera doesn't seem to encode to MPEG-4 ASP in any way.
Without an effort like this, the video tag would be dead in the water. Forever.
Wrong. The video tag was starting to see adoption, because all video has unified behind h.264, so it made the use of the video tag actually work across all browsers. There are multiple implementations today; I know because I use them.
Now there is no video codec standard, hence everyone will switch bac to Flash players because THAT is now the common denominator that can play the h.264 video that everyone is encoding and using. As for VP8, a codec I would like very much to see made common; that is now relegated to the same lofty position Ogg occupies in the audio scene.
Forgive me if I'm not enthralled at a decade more of using Flash players until either Google collapses (which is as likely as the Thundar the Barbarian scenario for the moon) or they come to their senses and add back h.264 support.
Or I suppose Chrome could falter and make the point moot, but I doubt that as well, it has too much traction and is really a pretty good browser otherwise.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
>MPEG-LA has already claimed that WebM most likely infringes upon their patents. If you adopt it, you risk a danger that is actually likely and in MPEG-LA's interest,
In other words if they lose in the marketplace against WebM they will try to win the courtroom with their stable of bullshit patents like "drawing to screen web-based device" and "putting data in framebuffer of mobile device"
Stop defending software patents as being legitimate concepts in a debate over formats. They're roadblocks society has long overgrown. Suggesting that we should align ourselves with the larger mafiosio because he has more guns is stupid, shortsighted, and shows you to be a MPEGLA shill even if that isn't your intention.
Something tells me that MS and Apple (and especially, Apple) will do all they can to break the plugin's functionality.
Did you miss the part where MS had already announced that IE9 will handle WebM just fine provided the codec is installed, a few months ago?
In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video as well as VP8 video when the user has installed a VP8 codec on Windows.
It's about as clear as it gets. It also dodges any patent issues nicely as far as MS is concerned (if MPEG LA wants to sue Google, they are given a clear line of fire since Google is the one making and distributing the codec).
Developers should pay close attention to how Microsoft ... react to this
Already did, a while ago.
So far as I know, Chrome doesn't have an open codec architecture for HTML5 video. Safari does (it uses QuickTime). It's not entirely clear about IE9 - it looks like it uses the OS-provided H.264, and it will also use VP8 if installed, but whether it will pick up other codecs (e.g. Theora) was not stated.
Opera is interesting. They use GStreamer - on all platforms. On Linux, the system one is used, so if you have H.264 decoder installed (e.g. paid one from Fluendo, or possibly x264 would work too?), it should just pick it up. On Windows and OS X, they use their private version of GStreamer, but it should still be possible to make an x264-based plugin for that. It's just that no-one bothered.
It's not a browser plugin in the same way as Flash, or that recent Microsoft thingy to play H.264 in Firefox. It's just codecs. Quote:
The HTML tag specification actually provides a capability known as canPlayType. Web developers use this capability to see which codecs are supported by the particular browser and it is completely transparent to them whether the codec was shipped natively in the browser or later installed by an end user. Safari and IE9 provide a way for users to install support for additional codecs via this capability. So basically web page developers still write their site based on the standards and all this “plug-in” does is add a capability to the browser in the context of what is permitted by the standard.
So basically it's just a QuickTime filter for Safari, and whatever IE uses (DirectShow?) for IE.
H.264 official name is MPEG-4 AVC. DivX/XviD/H.263 official name is MPEG-4 ASP
This made me cringe slightly. H.264 is the official name for the CODEC from the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG). MPEG-4 AVC is the official name from the ISO/IEC Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG).
H.263 is an earlier standard from VCEG which was (and still is) intended mainly for video conferencing. It is completely unrelated to any MPEG standards. The Sorensen Spark CODEC, used by QuickTime and Flash when they are not using H.264, is based on H.263.
DivX and XviD are both names of implementations of the MPEG-4 Part 2 CODEC.
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Why is it that no one seems to be concerned over the idea that, sometime in the future, Google might change their minds and start enforcing THEIR patents?
They've irrevocably given up their rights to enforce their patents against WebM implementations, that's why. Now, if they had patents that h.264 infringed, they could still sue users of h.264... but WebM is safe in that regard.