Google, H.264 and Video on the Web

&#62; If you charge your visitors for the videos, you’ll have to pay royalty fines, but if you offer the video for free you won’t have to worry about that, ever. <i>Ever?</i> Yes, ever.<p>The "Yes, ever." link points to to <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachme...</a> , which says (emphasis mine):<p>"MPEG LA announced today that its AVC Patent Portfolio License will continue not to charge royalties for Internet Video that is free to end users (known as Internet Broadcast AVC Video) <i>during the next License term from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2015.</i>"<p>I don't see how "until the end of 2015" means "forever." It's also not clear whether this covers free software or just content publishers.<p>In other words, it looks exactly like the prelude to another GIF bait-and-switch.

&#62; "Their stated reason is for the sake of “openness” on the web, but that’s a ridiculous claim because they embed the not-open-at-all Flash player inside the browser, and will continue to do so."<p>Adobe Flash. Not Google Flash. Google isn't putting resources into making Flash for Chrome. Adobe is. Google is simply stating that they won't put resources into H.264. This doesn't mean you can't have plugins for Chrome that do this. Just that Google isn't going to do this.<p>The same reasoning you provide for Google supporting H.264 can be applied to Apple and Microsoft as well for supporting WebM and Theora.

Good stuff, the most fair coverage I've read on this.<p>Because there has been no actual withdrawal timetable announced, I wonder if the Chrome Team is waiting for the moment when it will least hurt their users: full WebM support in YouTube or something like that.<p>I think the Chrome team can claim ideological consistency because they only support closed technologies through plugins. Flash, Quicktime, Java, and PDF are all supported through plugins. The Chrome team is making the statement that H.264 doesn't belong on the open web, and that's why they're removing first class support for it.

I'd love to see the diagram scaled by global web share, and perhaps with a fourth colour for those delivered "via Flash". I think you'll get a completely different feel for what the data is trying to tell you. Of course individual web developers should scale it for their own web audience before making any decisions.<p>(Some other minor notes on the contents of the table: WebM is confirmed for Firefox 4, due in the next month or so, and you do say the chart reflect a few months from now. Desktop Safari supports WebM just as much as IE9 except it already does it and also supports Theora in that same manner, Microsoft have just been more vocal about their potential support of WebM and nothing else. I'd drop IE9 to "with user installed codec" for WebM and raise Safari to the same for WebM and Theora. Finally, IE8 and below aren't going to get WebM unless some very minor plugins, like ChromeFrame or OpenCodecs, get Flash-like penetration levels and if you're allowing that then basically anything is possible. Oh, and does Android support HTML5 video tag H.264 or just Flash video H.264 via the browser?)

Nice review of the issue! Personally, I'm not that excited over one browser, or even two, adding or dropping video support. I develop for a spectrum of users/browsers and if the technique doesn't work across browsers, I avoid it. Managing a collection of online video means you want the easiest encoding with the longest possible shelf life, combined with simple deployment across platforms.

&#62; Their stated reason is for the sake of “openness” on the web, but that’s a ridiculous claim because they embed the not-open-at-all Flash player inside the browser, and will continue to do so.<p>I'd not go as far as calling this ridiculous. True, this feels wrong, but it's a fairly weighted decision - average users would tolerate "old" Flash-based fallback instead of native HTML5 &#60;video&#62; (most users won't understand the difference), but wouldn't tolerate lack of ability to play Farmville.<p>&#62; WebM become the open standard (or codec) for video on the web, but the thing is: not right now<p>Unfortunately, "not right now" means "never". Google is already late with this decision, but as HTML5 &#60;video&#62; is not <i>too</i> widespread, there's still a possibility that they'll overturn the situation.<p>H.264 removal was a bold move, and its short-term consequences would hurt both users and developers, that's for certain. There are several various predictions on how the long-term outcome will be, and we could only guess which one is right.

History tends to repeat itself. What will happen when MPEG-LA will establish a WebM Pool of Patents as they did with VC-1, making sure EVERYBODY knows the royalties for WebM will be at least as high as for H.264 FOR LICENSEES. For users infringing H.264 patents there will be no cap, of course. Google will never shield any WebM user, just as Micro$oft did not with VC-1. And mind you, WebM includes obvious (like the Intra mode coding) infringing of H.264 patents.

Great article. I drew that very chart this morning trying to sort out the implications of this change.<p>&#62; "As a side note, it would be great if MPEG LA would simply open up the licensing terms for H.264 and make it royalty-free forever for 1: browsers to implement it, and 2: people on the Internet to produce &#38; sell video with it."<p>How hard would this be to do? Is that all that prevents FF/Opera/Chrome from supporting h.264?

Good balanced article.<p>If I had Google's ear I would tell them that they may think they're at an inflection point on HTML5 video, but they're too late. There are likley just two results: (1) They get steamrolled and everyone moves to H264. Or (2) &#60;video&#62; effectively dies and Flash stays strong (Flash should play both sides to push this agenda).<p>Google should instead be working on a great free 3D codec.