Google reaffirms intent to derail HTML5 H.264 video with WebM browser plugins - Page 2

Massive technical inferiority? Do you know anything about video encoding? Read some of the comparisons between the two formats, there are pros and cons in both and the fact that webm may be patent free (and if it's not it will likely be hard to force licenses for anyway) is a massive benefit.



The only content supplier that really matters here is youtube due to its monopoly on web video. It makes no difference if browsers support it or not.

This must be one of the most naive piece of romanticizing crap I've read in months.

If you're talking about 'money' the web isn't 'free' at all, and the FOSS crowd has achieved nothing whatsoever to make it more 'free' than it could have been. Quite the opposite in fact. The 'free' web you are talking about is funded by ads, by data mining, by spamming, by proprietary, DRM laden delivery methods such as Flash, by services that try to get you hooked up on freebees to get you to upgrade for money if you want more, by selling search result rankings for money, by filtering and spinning content to create hypes and virals. Many of the companies running this show have only been able to do so, because free software has allowed them to do so with minimal investments. Really, you must be extremely far out of touch with reality to think the internet is 'free as in beer' because of FOSS. Note that I'm not saying that FOSS is bad (it's great) or that FOSS caused any of the misery you can find everywhere on the web, just that it had no influence at all preventing it, which was what you implied.

If you were talking about 'free as in speech' your argument is ineffectual and irrelevant, because h264 is free as in speech just as much as http, HTML or any of the other technologies the web runs on, in fact even more so then VP8. The fact that it contains patentable technology doesn't contradict any of that, many other technologies behind the web contain patentable technology, yet they are used everywhere. Think MP3, Flash, PDF (adobe has patents on that), java, and so on.

If you want balanced journalism, this ain't the place to get it.

Here, you get rehashed copies of other journalists articles, warped and slanted in order to inflame passions. They do that so that they can get Google's money. Google pays AI each and every time an inflamed reader makes a post like the one you just did.

Drama queen

Of course selling your soul to a single company that runs on mining your data to target ads at you, grabbing whatever piece of technology they can get their hands on to facilitate it, is much better? Since when has paying for something (either directly or indirectly) become an immoral act of 'commercial monopolist creation'. Stop drinking the Kool-Aid man.

Agree.

By the way, monopolies are not *necessarily* wrong. I'm having my Microeconomics exam next week! So I think I know what I'm saying In particular, all patents create a sort of monopoly, which is good because it promotes innovation. But it's a temporary monopoly: sooner or later, all patents do expire, and the technology becomes free for everyone.

This shit is more entertaining than Day of our Lives. I love the smell of format wars in the morning!

At least there is a reason to have Dilger around for stories like this! As much as he sooks about Nokia, Microsoft, Motorola etc the man's hatred of Google is epic. The unbridled vitriol is so strong it's almost palpable. You can sense him strained over his MBP and frothing at the mouth as he slammed out each letter of this article with contempt. If nothing else it's entertaining!

In any case I can't see this going anywhere unless Google phases out h.264 from YouTube. If they ever do that they would basically be saying "we think Android and Google services are more important to users than iOS and Apple hardware". Now that, along with Dilger's subsequent hysterical meltdown, would be Oscar worthy!







Either one would take them years to get right.

In the meanwhile they could easily switch the default search provider to Bing for search.

Video is a little more difficult. They could potentially buy out Vimeo or partner with Facebook.


As a side note - IMO Facebook video is a far better platform than YouTube for me as a vast majority of videos I upload as just for friends to see (not the entire world).

There are no 'pros' to WebM at all except the fact that Google claims it is 'free', which remains to be seen. Unless you want to call the fact that WebM isn't much worse than H264 baseline profile (which is supposed to be used for low-bitrate, low-quality video like webcams) a 'pro' for WebM. And yes I've read very extensive analysis about it and have reasonably advanced knowledge of video coding theory and practice. Already at 720p HQ video (which is half of the video on YouTube) WebM is massively inferior to H264, nobody is going to be able to disprove that with facts, period.

By becoming a writer for AI?

Don't forget they would screw over some of their biggest supporters and their customers as well. The likes of Samsung, Toshiba, Philips, etc, who are both MPEG-LA members with products on the market that rely on H264 for YouTube functionality and already put a lot of eggs in Googles basket by backing Android, some of them openly advertising itas a big selling point. Pissing them off by crippling the products they sold their customers, doesn't sound like a good idea.

Somehow everyone wants to turn this into a 'Google vs. Apple and Microsoft' war, while it is actually more like a 'Google vs. Anyone with vested interests in web video' war. Dropping H264 from YouTube would be suicide for Google.

this is a case of "you get what you pay for". H.264 does involve royalties. It does things the *semi* open source alternative does not do. Funny about that, people having a notion of being paid for work and invention. How strange the world is!

How ironic. If *you* knew anything about video encoding you would know the latest developments in H.264, particularly x264 and GPU/Sandy Bridge hardware encoding eclipse anything in the history of digital video encoding. WebM is nowhere close to the momentum, quality and efficiency of H.264.

YouTube is the only content supplier that matters? Maybe to 10 year olds who continually spam the comments with "rofl gay" and "u r fag"

I miss DED's articles on www.roughlydrafted.com. DED used to write more prolifically there. Detailed and well researched, he's always fun to read.

I was wondering if Google are really so into this "open" thingy, why don't they try to drop support for H.264 altogether on Andriod?

This is one of the most interesting articles that I've read on AppleInsider :-)

I don't know why, actually.

I hate when one side of a conflict is painted totally white (Apple) and the other party is pained totally black (Google). Usually this repels me. But for some reason, I liked this piece. Maybe because I know nothing about the patent system, and I did not see any flaws in the author's statements, like I usually do when he writes about technical side of the Google-Apple conflict.

So long as they leave YouTube with HTML5 I don'y really see what they do with Chrome as being of that much importance to Apple. Of course if Google's plan to rule the planet with Chrome were to succeed then it might I suppose but I don't see that plan working to be honest. If they were to drop it from YouTube that would be far more damaging but it would also be damaging to YouTube IMO.

As a rule of thumb, if you order someone not to think about elephants, they will soon think about elephants. Likewise, if your company motto is 'Don't Be Evil'...

Reading this article I am struck by the fact we are being told Google had avoided being sued because of the argument they 'make no money' from this or that. It is explained that the law suit goes after the user of the technology not Google. What puzzles me is why the fact Google indirectly makes money from the free give aways hasn't been tied into a law suit in a good old 'follow the money' way. If Google makes billions from advertising by 'giving it away', they are still making money from 'it' even if that earning is indirect. Thus they should still be liable for patent infringements and subject to the law suits. If I stole diamonds and gave them away to someone who then gave me data from which I made money I'd still be earning from my theft! I'd still be a thief and subject to the law of the land.

So what is the MPEG group doing about this? (apart from preparing a lawsuit..)

How much longer will these h.264 patents last? Can't be many more years?

It costs too much to sue Google. It's much easier to sue their associates.

They expire in 2027.

As others have mentioned there is only one major issue - YouTube. If Google pulled h.264 from YouTube, that would hurt Apple's mobile strategy. However I don't think Google can get away with it. That would bring in the Feds and Google would certainly lose that battle. Either by having to keep h.264 or by YouTube being displaced by another company while the legal battle drags out.

Assuming that YouTube remains compatible with h.264 nothing else matters. The only remaining issue is how much effort content publishers are willing to offer for reaching the widest possible audience. They will probably continue as they are now by offering various formats and Flash as a fall back.

Video will be entirely holographic by that time.

Stealing diamonds is a criminal act, stealing code is a civil matter.

Ads... and serving up as many as possible, on as many platforms and content as possible.

Android
Was only developed and released free to serve up mobile ads. (period). Even developers acknowledge this fact, considering that the Marketplace doesn't seem to be working well for developers that would like to be paid outright for their efforts.

Search, Books, Services, Maps, Gmail, etc... is ALL about ads, nothing to think that the WebM ploy is about anything else BUT ads.

WebM
When released and integrated with their own devices, without a doubt, will have a Java-based layer to overlay ads. And surely the proposed WebM Plugin will be the same as Flash, but just different enough to get out of a patent dispute with Adobe.

You think for a moment that Google embraced Adobe and Flash, integrated it into Chrome and Android, without "looking under the hood"(?), or getting something other than a "selling point"?

WebM Plugin
This is seriously sinister, since it would allow Google to even serve ads overlayed on content that they are not serving on their own servers/services, since the layer code is built into the plugin.

Think: Vimeo, Facebook, or your own website's videos being overlayed with ads because the WebM plug-in is needed/installed. This without needing the consent of the owner of the video or the server publishing it, since Google received the consent to do so, by the end-user accepting the EULA when they installed the WebM plugin. Not to forget, but Google Analytics will also be built into the plugin, naturally, for it to be able to work properly.

At the moment, I doubt Google would try this trickery with H264, and besides they don't need to, because Adobe's Flash takes care of that for them with their wrapper.

NOTE: fact is that Google and many others are working on a way to overlay HTML5-H264 videos with ads anyway. One way or another, HTML5 video will have ads, and there's nothing anyone can do about that.

There is no such thing as "free". There are and always will be strings attached. And no, I'm not wearing a tin-hat or thinking conspiracy. Actually, you have to see this move by Google as doing good business and keeping focused: sell and deliver more ads!

What ever seems to forget is Crome is based on Apple's Webkit. Sure Apple made Webkit opensource but don't surprised when Apple takes Webkit back. Beside what will Google do when Webkit includes HRML5 in Webkit? Drop Webkit?

The irony...Adobe Flash will become the new savior for Mac users.

This has absolutely nothing to do with Google not wanting to pay licensing fees for H.264 and Google is absolutely lying when it says it does. They are also lying when they say they are concerned about the affect on innovation. And they are lying when they say they care anything about open source.

This is about two things. First, they are propping up Flash because they believe the demise of Flash gives others a competitive advantage over them. Second, they want to control video on the Web and don't really care how wide a swath they lay waste to in achieving that goal. Their plugin strategy is a giant step backward and a giant step away from an open Web, free of proprietary plugins.

The whole open source thing is just a ruse, a diversion, and the open source community consists of a large number of vocal people who are easily manipulated by the symbols of open source.

Here's some food for thought. H.264 is an open standard. WebM isn't an open standard at all, it's completely controlled by Google. Now, which of these is really more open? WebM is essentially a proprietary technology.

The intent to do anything doesn't mean you will, so why not let google try. In the process they could create some useful change even if it is something like encouraging the removal of all royalties for h.264. Or who knows perhaps google will create the format needed for the digital blu-ray files needed to fulfill Apple etc intent to kill physical disks

As long as everyone else is free to choice what they want to use let Google have their go on this.

Couple of early misconceptions. First, Google used the term 'plugin' a bit out of context. What they're talking about is making an installer to make the WebM codec available to Safari and IE through QuickTime and DirectShow. As I'm sure you guys know, Safari and IE take a lot more liberal approach to HTML5 video, playing what the user has installed. Firefox, Chrome, and Google only play what the browser makers allow. So effectively, Google is taking advantage of something in others that it won't allow in it's own browser to push it's own agenda with WebM.

But on the positive side, what that does mean is that these aren't really 'plugins' as far as the web page knows. As far as the HTML5 capabilities of the browser to do all the neat stuff we've been seeing, WebM would be just as native as H.264 (minus platform hardware acceleration)

Now, Firefox, which does have more market share than Chrome and Safari combined, can *only* play WebM/Theora natively. It (like Chrome and Opera) does NOT take advantage of the codecs already licensed by Apple and Microsoft and cannot play back H.264. Ever. On any platform. What Microsoft has released actually IS a plugin, basically bypassing HTML 5 and replacing it with an instance of Windows MediaPlayer, just as much an island on the page as Flash is.

I can see the point of both sides, but the problem is that both sides ignore the *good* points that the other side makes. So many words have been spilled out of this, it's a real shame for me, a web developer dealing in video, that they have been spilled with so little objectivity. Both codecs are good for different reasons. I wish that all the players had taken the -- up to now -- Chrome route and supported both.

Ok bad example, but answer the main point I made please

OK but if anyone did there is a lot of money at the end of the trail ...

And please explain why royalties are such a bad thing? The members of the MPEG-LA group have put a cap on it ($6M)... and why shouldn't they as a group receive something for their Patents, efforts, scientific reasearch and engineers to continually improve it?

Why does everyone expect everything to be "free"? Why does any "open source advocate" think that Goggle gives a royal f*** about them? Goggle is more than happy to let you blindly contribute without adding you to their payrolls. Think about that.

Bite me, Google. I'm abandoning you over this. No more Chrome, no more Google search (DuckDuckGo has replaced you).

The issue for Apple and other manufacturers is that supporting h.264 is done in hardware making it possible to play high quality video on a device with an underpowered cpu. In the case of webM, the video would drain the battery, drop frames and disappoint users. If WebM were on a chip then the license holders will have justification of lost revenue due to patent infringement and the law suit would be filed

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Short answer: It's complicated.

Longer answer: These huge multinational companies are sneaky and it usually takes the US Feds or the EU to rein them in. That doesn't happen until a company's actions constitute hardship/harm to citizens or show improper leveraging of a monopoly, which I think would be the case with YouTube.

Yep, those are the issues. Which is why it's certainly premature to do WebM now. It seems like a better issue to wait for hardware and not push it exclusively. Hardware decoding is actually now coming onto the market, from AMD, NVidia, and ARM. Adoption of those designs will take years, though. WebM seems like an excellent long term investment in the web. I just don't like how it's all gone down. Denying choice seems like something repulsive to OSS advocates, and yet that's what they're doing here.

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Like the standardization of rail gauges in the 19th century, maybe an adult (the government) needs to step in and impose order on the corporate children. A central authority has a role to play in helping to create order out of free market counterproductive chaos. Seems like we are reaching that point. It's like football without referees out there!