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

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  • Reply 41 of 481
    d-ranged-range Posts: 396member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by StephenHoward View Post


    He's entirely wrong regarding H.264.



    The history of the internet is replete with examples of businesses trying to lever their proprietary products into key infrastructure roles. Each time open source advocates have taken the long view and the internet is free today because of those decisions.



    I say thank you open source advocates for being willing to take the long view over short term expediency.



    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.
  • Reply 42 of 481
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Superbass View Post


    Lately every article can be summed up with 2 simple points:



    1. Apple is Correct/Perfect/Amazing/The Future/Putting the Customer First

    2. Not Apple (Google, MS, Consumer Reports, etc) is WRONG/FLAWED/STUPID/SO LAST YEAR/ONLY INTERESTED IN MONEY.







    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.
  • Reply 43 of 481
    d-ranged-range Posts: 396member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by StephenHoward View Post


    How pathetic, you're happy to create a commercial monopolist because it makes life easier for you today, don't worry about tomorrow.



    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.
  • Reply 44 of 481
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by d-range View Post


    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.
  • Reply 45 of 481
    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!













    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Mike Fix View Post


    This will be interesting to watch. I wonder how much longer Apple is going to sit on the sidelines before they launch a search engine and a video site.



    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).
  • Reply 46 of 481
    d-ranged-range Posts: 396member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by tjw View Post


    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..



    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.
  • Reply 47 of 481
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by RichL View Post


    How does one ignite a hailstorm?







    By becoming a writer for AI?
  • Reply 48 of 481
    d-ranged-range Posts: 396member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Firefly7475 View Post


    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".



    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.
  • Reply 49 of 481
    gary54gary54 Posts: 169member
    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!
  • Reply 50 of 481
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by tjw View Post


    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.



    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"
  • Reply 51 of 481
    Quote:

    GREAT article

    DED is an amazing writer.



    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.
  • Reply 52 of 481
    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?
  • Reply 53 of 481
    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.
  • Reply 54 of 481
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    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.
  • Reply 55 of 481
    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'...
  • Reply 56 of 481
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    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.
  • Reply 57 of 481
    palegolaspalegolas Posts: 1,361member
    So what is the MPEG group doing about this? (apart from preparing a lawsuit..)
  • Reply 58 of 481
    boeyc15boeyc15 Posts: 986member
    How much longer will these h.264 patents last? Can't be many more years?
  • Reply 59 of 481
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by digitalclips View Post


    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.



    It costs too much to sue Google. It's much easier to sue their associates.
  • Reply 60 of 481
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by boeyc15 View Post


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



    They expire in 2027.
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