“Dean Hachamovitch, the man in charge of Internet Explorer for Microsoft, has taken the time to write a nearly 3,000 word piece about the situation today,” Siegler writes. “It’s a long, great post well worth the read. But just in case you can’t make it through the entire post, I’m summarize it simply: Microsoft is fully behind H.264 as the codec for web video going forward. Why? Because they have just as many reservations about WebM as Google all of a sudden seems to have about H.264.”
“I had a chance to speak with Hachamovitch last night about his thoughts on the situation. His take is very clear in that he’s confused by Google’s motives to ditch H.264. Specifically, he notes that at one point not too long ago, Microsoft, Apple, and Google all supported H.264 as a codec for HTML5 video on the web,” Siegler writes. “Yes, believe it or not, Microsoft was actually on the side of many of the main players of the web when it came to a future technology. The one major player not on their side was, of course, Mozilla. But Microsoft was happy to make the plug-in to ensure that they supported H.264 for HTML5 video as well.”
“‘We had a somewhat stable state in web video,’ Hachamovitch says. Then something odd happened,” Siegler writes. “Google decided to pull their support for H.264 as the web video standard. The reason? The patents controlled by the MPEGLA group scared them. Or something. I’ve made my own thoughts pretty clear on this matter. I think that’s a total red herring. Google is pulling support for H.264 as a tactic in their war with Apple.”
Read more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Under the mole’s direction, Google lost their way. Wouldn’t it be nice if Larry Page led his company back onto the right path?
Google want to only use tech that doesn’t incur royalties. H264 will but I doubt it is significant.
They offer their own tech for no charge because they can collect data from its use. It’s not free but a form of reverse advertising. Then they go and use that information to make their advertising more effective.
Today is not a good day for Microsoft. The latest Joy of Tech really slams the Monkey Boy and over at PCWorld two articles blast away at Microsoft, one of them Dvorak! He rips Microsoft a new one.
The times they are a changing.
In fact, having M$ on its side is’nt that good advertising at all!
Coudn’t it be some rotted trick aiming at discrediting Apple to the eyes of the world?
M$ has never been fare, after all…
MS and Apple on the same side. Somehow somewhere the lion is laying down with the lamb….its the end of the world!
Dean’s post is shockingly well written, and does an excellent job of laying out the situation for everyone involved. I’m frankly astounded that someone from Microsoft can speak so clearly on this issue. Definitely worth a read.
Ogg Theora Video, or WebM as Google suddenly re-branded it, is trash. The video quality sucks, its performance sucks, and there is no plausible road map for fixing these issues in the future.
Google’s real reasons for supporting it seems very cynical.
Strategy: weaken Microsoft
Tactic: disrupt derivative hardware manufacturer relationship with zero cost OS
Intended Consequence: constrict ongoing license revenue stream for desktop OS
Way to go, Steve Ballmer!!!
May you remain CEO of MS forever!!!!!
Fsck Google
no doubt Apple will also add a WebM plug-in to the basic QuickTime package for Macs. which means Google has no leverage on the desktop at all.
as for iOS … what will Apple do?
and i still think Apple should just buy Adobe outright, kill off Flash and totally overhaul all its bloated but valuable software. it would be a good business match with Apple’s pro applications, Filemaker, and so on.
The big loser in this battle is Linux since on the Mac and Windows Chrome will revert to the OS to play H.264 (like FireFox), but Linux has no fallback.
Chrome is also a loser as it was one of the strongest contenders to IE on Windows.
Great article (from a MS guy… who knew?). It boils down to this:
Google may talk about patent-free codec all they want, but are they willing to indemnify and legally protect everyone who ends up sued for infringing on someone else’s patent? If MPEG-LA sues some small web site owner for online video encoded in WebM, which infringes on their patent? Or sues MLB? Or Apple? Will Google defend them?
Anyone who provides H.264 codec legally is doing so by purchasing a proper license from MPEG-LA. For MS, Apple, Adobe and other big players (including Google), this isn’t too much money. For Mozilla, five million per year is the actual cost, based on their current user base. They simply can’t afford it. Google, however can, easily, but simply won’t.
MS guy gives a good argument (for a refreshing change).
Could Apple and
MS buy MPEG-LA , and make it open sourced
The group that owns h.264 recently stated that the will NEVER charge for it. So…
Rev. Dr.
That group is called MPEG-LA, and the license for which they will never charge for (to which you are referring) is for delivering free content. So, if you are a web-site owner, and want to put video for free online, you are allowed to use H.264. However, In order for Mozilla (and Apple, MS, Opera, Google, or any other browser maker) to implement H.264 decoder in their browsers (so that people who surf the web can see your free H.264 content), they must buy license from MPEG-LA for that codec, for every copy of their software they sell/give away for free. Same thing for Adobe, Apple, MS or everyone else who makes tools that allow you, the user, to encode your video into H.264.
This is why Mozilla must pay 5 million dollars to MPEG-LA — so that they can build into Firefox the support for H.264 playback.
I hope this makes it clear for everyone.
Yeah, MDN, Larry Page will lead Google on to the right path. Wasn’t he the one who bought Android? Yeah, he was.
“Yes, believe it or not, Microsoft was actually on the side of many of the main players of the web when it came to a future technology.”
Daniel Eran Dilger’s articles at Appleinsider detail it perfectly – Google wants to make money off of ads and paying for anything cuts into that profit margin, hence, no support for h.264, which requires paying for licensing.
It doesn’t make sense for Google to pull support of H.264, just because they want to make their codec open and available. They can support both in Chrome. They already were.
The reasons they gave are extremely bewildering, considering they’re also building in support for Adobe Flash, which is not an open technology.
This pro-Flash, anti-H.264 is OBVIOUSLY an attack against Apple. How can it not be?
I am very seriously thinking about abandoning all google services, with maybe the exception of pure search (the original, simple, plain google.) I’m looking at alternatives to posting web videos that don’t require flash to view, going to give up Picasa web albums, Picasa app, gmail and all the rest. YouTube might be the toughest, but honestly… I can minimize my use of it. I might just keep Google Earth since there is really nothing I know of that would replace it, but basically I’m just going to consciously use anything Google-related as little as I possibly can.
It will take some willpower, but I’m really getting tired of Google anything… especially when they are bitching about Bing copying their search results (which they did,) but somehow it’s okay for Google to simply steal Java code for Android and re-distribute it as their own… screw ’em! I used to like Google once upon a time, but those days are long gone.
Its not standards its not royalty payments
ITS ACCESS TO DATA
Google needs DATA to survive as an AD placement company!!
oops
AND Flash and WebM (I suspect) allow Google that Data Access
I love H.264 but I think it was a good thing Google dropped it. We can’t have any patent isssues and licensing issues with what should become standard video for HTML 5 especially since it will be impossible for open source guys to implement it. Beta 9 of Firefox 4 added support for WebM or what the video codec Ilis called which is the Google codec so they are on the same side.