Google Drops H264 from Chrome (1 Viewer)

[Sam Posten]

Related links:


http://www.cultofmac.com/apple-loves-the-web-and-the-web-loves-apple-says-gruber-macworld-2011/78971


Earlier versions of this talk:

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-doesnt-suck-at-the-web-it-just-has-different-motives-2010-9

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/27/fanboi_king_on_apple_and_the_open_web/

 

[DaveF]

Originally Posted by Adam Lenhardt


Apple produces extremely successful closed systems. It's a company that is at its best when it controls all of the variables. That model is antithetical to the nature of the web. Apple's most successful products -- iTunes, the iPhone, the iPad -- create an exceptional user experience by corralling off a small part of the web where Apple controls the variables. This is great if you want to buy the package that Apple is offering. If you don't, there are alternative options from other companies.

And this is why I don't trust Google (though I use and enjoy their products), because they're every bit as closed, perhaps moreso, than Apple when it comes down to their actual profit centers. Let me illustrate:


Google produces extremely successful closed systems. It's a company that is at its best when it controls all of the variables. That model is antithetical to the nature of the web. Googles's most successful products -- Search and Advertising -- create an exceptional user experience by corralling off a huge part of the web where Google controls the variables. This is great if you want to use the package that Google is offering. If you don't, there are negligible alternative options from other companies.


Google is all talk when it comes to open: their actual money-makers, search and advertising, are deeply guarded secrets. They're certainly not open-source, open-standards, or open anything. They care about "open" only when they can brandish it as a weapon against other companies.

 

[DaveF]

Unfortunately, I didn't really follow the Opera blog.

One important thing to keep in mind is that Flash is already ubiquitous. If you want to do any kind of video on the web, you don't have a choice. Flash is needed

"H.264 is everywhere, and the web does not exist in a vacuum" Just because a format is widespread offline does not mean that it is suitable for use on the web.

Uh...what...?


Or...

H.264 is a patent-encumbered and therefore "closed" standard.

On the other hand, WebM is very much in the spirit of the W3C patent policy. Google grants anyone royalty-free access to the technology. [but will not indemnify users of WebM because they don't know yet if it's truly patent-unencumbered and aren't going to take the risk of being bankrupted over it.]

So we've got a known quantity with known fees, or an unknown quantity, untested in the courts, with potentially unknown fees. This is better, how?



If WebM is all roses, there's energy-efficient hardware decoders for mobile devices, it's all free to use, it's high quality, then by all means let's switch pronto. But for now I'm skeptical of Google's game as anything more than an attack on Apple, regardless of it being good or bad for end users.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

There are plenty of search engines out there. Google is ubiquitous now through user preference, and user preference alone. Google's near-monopoly on online advertising, which is very troubling I agree, is an offshoot of Google's success in search. Both are web tools, though, not file formats.

Originally Posted by DaveF

So we've got a known quantity with known fees, or an unknown quantity, untested in the courts, with potentially unknown fees. This is better, how?

This pernicious behavior would seem to be an argument against H.264, not for it. So far MPEG LA has presented no proof that WebM, in whole or part, violates any of its patents. If it had an outright claim, all it would have to do is sue WebM, win in court, and end WebM once and for all. But it has no outright claim. So instead, it wink and nods saying, "Maybe WebM violates our patents, maybe it doesn't. We'll wait until lots of users are potentially infringing and then go after all of them in court." In other words, we're talking about scare tactics to avoid fair competition because MPEG LA probably wouldn't succeed on the merits of its case.


It should be noted that H.264 does not equal Apple. Apple holds some of the patents in the MPEG LA patent pool, but so do Dolby, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Philips, LG, Microsoft, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Siemens, Sony and Toshiba. H.264 on the web would not be a big moneymaker for Apple, and WebM won't make any money at all for Google.

 

[DaveF]

Originally Posted by Adam Lenhardt

There are plenty of search engines out there. Google is ubiquitous now through user preference, and user preference alone. Google's near-monopoly on online advertising, which is very troubling I agree, is an offshoot of Google's success in search. Both are web tools, though, not file formats.

Google is ubiquitous because it was clearly the superior search engine when it appeared and rose to prominence with the geeks telling the layman that they need to change. Now, it probably has momentum, but it has the market. I'm not sure what plethora of search engines that you see are. I see ... Bing with about 10% of the market, I think. (Yahoo is a "portal"; it's search was a facade for Google the past few years. No it uses Bing). Then there's, what, Blecko? Google's prominence was well earned. It beat the stuffing out of Yahoo's "directory" approach and Alta Vista and all the other now-forgotten former search titans.


Web tools. File formats. Doesn't matter. If "open" is better for the web, then why shouldn't the single most important of web usage, the search engine, be "open"? Why doesn't Google, with their battlecry of "Open!" reveal their source code, methodologies, algorithms for search engine and ad-placement? Because that's where they make their money. They are extremely interested in being open when it means putting out free tools that undercut a competitor's profit centers while (hopefully) leading to increased search-and-ads. But for their money-makers, they as closed as anyone else.


Which is fine for a corporate stratagem. I benefit as a user from a free, high-quality web email, among other things. But it also means I don't believe a word Google says about "open" per se.

Originally Posted by DaveF

So we've got a known quantity with known fees, or an unknown quantity, untested in the courts, with potentially unknown fees. This is better, how?

This pernicious behavior would seem to be an argument against H.264, not for it. So far MPEG LA has presented no proof that WebM, in whole or part, violates any of its patents. If it had an outright claim, all it would have to do is sue WebM, win in court, and end WebM once and for all. But it has no outright claim. So instead, it wink and nods saying, "Maybe WebM violates our patents, maybe it doesn't. We'll wait until lots of users are potentially infringing and then go after all of them in court." In other words, we're talking about scare tactics to avoid fair competition because MPEG LA probably wouldn't succeed on the merits of its case.


Might be. But current corporate tactics seem to be to wait until the technology is in significant, profitable use before suing. More money to be made that way.

It should be noted that H.264 does not equal Apple. Apple holds some of the patents in the MPEG LA patent pool, but so do Dolby, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Philips, LG, Microsoft, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Siemens, Sony and Toshiba. H.264 on the web would not be a big moneymaker for Apple, and WebM won't make any money at all for Google.

Google's two great threats appear to be Facebook and Apple. Both because they divert users from the search and ad-placement mechanisms that Google relies on. Apple seems to be the driving force for displacing Flash as an online ubiquity and for making H.264 the de facto choice for in HTML5. Google, by crushing H.264 and also rehabilitating Flash, may be looking to interfere with Apple's mobile strategy, and benefiting its Android push and hopefully its actual search and ad business.


Or maybe not. Maybe WebM is a better technology. A cheaper technology. And Apple and HTC and Microsoft will simply buy WebM decoder chips for their phones and tablets next year instead of the H.264 decoders they buy today. That's what I'm waiting and hoping to see.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The real test as to whether Apple is in Google's crosshairs isn't Chrome dropping H.264 support: it's whether YouTube drops H.264 support before The iPhone, iTouch and iPad add WebM support. The iOS platform gets around the lack of Flash support with direct H.264 support. If Google's intentions are benign, it will work with Apple to transition smoothly to a WebM-based YouTube. If Google wants to undercut Apple, it will take steps to ensure that the next batch of Android phones have WebM hardware decryption built in, and then pull the rug out from under the iPhone et al and leave users wondering why their YouTube app suddenly no longer works.

 

[DaveF]

Sounds good. I would expect to see the first WebM decoder hardware in Android phones. If Google is serious, it could be in the next iteration of their nexus phone.

 

[mattCR]

ATI (AMD) have already said that a webm hardware decoder is basically an easy done item.


But in the turnaround is fair play market, Microsoft is releasing a plugin for Chrome that supports X264


http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/02/microsoft-releases-h-264-plug-in-for-google-chrome-vows-to-supp/

 

[DaveF]

Fascinating perspective from an MS blogger. I find it nicely apolitical and informative.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/02/02/html5-and-web-video-questions-for-the-industry-from-the-community.aspx


It seems that Google's efforts will be for naught if there's an H.264 plug-in for Chrome, and Flash can be used as default on Chrome as well. And everything else will continue to play H.264. And iOS and Android do H.264. How's Google going to get any traction on pushing to WebM if everyone can completely ignore it?


It seems that if Google wants to make it happen, they have to move YouTube to WebM, dropping H.264 completely (even as a Flash fallback), and drop H.264 from Android and move it to WebM.


Or they can go the standards route, but that will then take years and three versions of Internet Explorer later...

 

[KeithAP]

Tin foil hat wearing prediction time....


I believe sometime in the near future, 6-12 months we will see an announcement from Adobe, not sure what yet, that will be seen as a great benefit to Android specifically, or possibly Google in general. I don't think Google made this decision by itself. I believe Adobe had a hand in it and the primary focus was to try to derail, or least slow down Apple's plans.


Remember, you heard it hear first.

-Keith

 

[mattCR]

Real tinfoil hat is that Adobe is waiting for someone to buy them. And of those out there, Google is a much more likely suitor then anyone else.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I have no problems with an H.264 plug-in; if Microsoft wants to take the royalty hit, that's fine. I just don't support building the format into the HTML5 spec.

 

[DaveF]

The problem, if I understand the MS article I linked to earlier, is that Google isn't working to include WebM in the HTML5 spec. Rather, they're playing MS's game of a decade ago: create de facto standards through brute force of market share and corporate arm-twisting. (But maybe I misunderstand. I'm no well read on HTML standards processes. Or maybe Google is going to start the standards process shortly.)

Originally Posted by Adam Lenhardt

I have no problems with an H.264 plug-in; if Microsoft wants to take the royalty hit, that's fine. I just don't support building the format into the HTML5 spec.

 

[DaveF]

Patent fight begins http://arstechnica.com/#!/web/news/2011/02/mpeg-la-starts-the-search-for-vp8-patents.ars

 

[Sam Posten]

#^%} just got real!

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

This can only be a good thing. Hopefully by March 18, we'll have a better idea of where things stand. If patent holders do come forward, we'll get the legal fight out of the way up front and see if VP8 has a legally viable claim to being royalty free. If patent holders don't come forward, it lifts a good deal of the cloud currently hanging over the WebM spec.

 

[mattCR]

I have to admit, I really desperately hate MPEG-LA's consortium, which smacks of racketeering, extortion and bullying tactics, and always has.