Microsoft Picks Another Web Standards Fight

mikejuk writes "WebRTC is a way to allow browsers to get in touch with one another using audio or video data without the help of a server. Google has been something of a pioneer in this area, and submitted a suggested technology for the standard. Mozilla has gone along with it, making it all look good. Microsoft, on the other hand, just seemed to be standing on the sidelines, watching what was happening. However, Microsoft now has a product that needs something like WebRTC; namely, Skype. It has been working on a web-based version of Skype and this has focused the collective mind on the problems of browser-to-browser communication. It now agrees that a standard is needed, just not the one Google and Mozilla are behind. Microsoft has submitted its own proposals for CU-RTC-Web or Customizable, Ubiquitous Real Time Communication over the Web, to the W3C. It may well be that Microsoft's alternative has features that make it superior, but a single standard is preferable to a better non-standard. Given Microsoft's need to make Skype work in the browser, it seems likely that, should its proposal not be accepted as the standard, it will press on regardless, thus splitting the development environment. Both Google and Mozilla have already put a lot of work into WebRTC, and there are partial implementations in Firefox, Chrome and Opera."

Comments

Re:Some things never change....

[MightyMartian]

If yes, then the standard angle can be reasonably angled, and Chrome+Firefox together certainly hold more than enough sway to do so. But if not, then the winner will be whoever delivers the product; end users don't care about standards, they just want things to work, and if only one guy has it work, well...

Again, that's 2005 thinking. All things being equal, with most of the web access via PCs running Windows, you bet, competition didn't have a chance in hell. If Browser A couldn't support it at all, then Internet Explorer would win by default.

But we're living in an age where a growing amount of web usage is not by PC, but by tablets, phones and other smart devices. The bulk of these devices, in fact the overwhelming majority of these devices do not run Internet Explorer, and even the most favorable projections do not show Microsoft making that big a dent in the mobile market to make IE the only meaningful player again.

The days when Microsoft could just give the rest of the browser makers a one-fingered salute, go it's merry way and know that it had already won before the fight broke out are done. There will be no more Internet Explorer 6s. Microsoft cannot afford to isolate itself by pushing a standard that no one else will or can support. Customers are not going to ditch their $700 tablets or phones just because Microsoft refuses to talk.

Re:Microsoft is correct

[roca]

You've copied Microsoft's talking points but they, and you, don't make sense. For example, both of the existing proposals are codec-agnostic. The codec discussion is important and ongoing but entirely independent of anything addressed by Microsoft's proposal.

>>> I would also point out that Microsoft is following the correct W3C procedure by making a proposal and asking for comments.
Being uninvolved in the public working group for two years, giving no feedback, and then suddenly dumping an entirely different proposal into the group with no warning (less than a week after the last IETF meeting) is not "correct procedure".