Google, H.264 and Video on the Web
farukat.es
farukat.es
The "Yes, ever." link points to to http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachme... , which says (emphasis mine):
"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) during the next License term from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2015."
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.
In other words, it looks exactly like the prelude to another GIF bait-and-switch.
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.
The same reasoning you provide for Google supporting H.264 can be applied to Apple and Microsoft as well for supporting WebM and Theora.
All the outcry over this I've read is basically a complaint that you can't ship one codec for HTML5 video, which you've never been able to do. That's what the whole argument over the video tag has always been about. The only difference this makes is that this cements the split instead of everybody expecting Firefox and Opera to give up and adopt H.264. If you were willing to ship just H.264 and flash fallback for Firefox/Opera, why wouldn't you be willing to ship H.264 and flash fallback for Chrome?
The same people with a problem with this have a problem with Flash, I imagine. I also imagine a large number of people complaining are Chrome users who think they know a thing or two about videos online.
Most of the arguments against Google doing this are smug, illogical, and stupid. Gruber asked a bunch of stupid questions, and a bunch of lemmings followed along asking about Flash. I'll go so far as to say if you're one of these people asking about Flash in Chrome, you are ignorant and wrong.
> Your comment is the kind that makes me glad I've been avoiding HN for the past few weeks.
Coincidentally, your comment is the kind that makes me glad you've been avoiding HN for the past few weeks.
Rather than simply posting insulting comments, you could attempt to contribute. It takes a bit more work and a bit of intelligence, but I'm sure you can manage. The net result is a better HN.
I've insulted plenty of people here in the past, maybe even you. For that I'm sorry. But I'm trying to be better than that, and although I don't think it's in evidence here, I'd like to believe that you are, too.
Sorry I wasn't specific enough. I actually realized this error after commenting, and considered editing, but honestly, I felt that it really wasn't that important, especially since my corrected statement would still make the same exact point.
> The intent of my comment was not to insult you (it really wasn't) but to get you to consider your own remarks, which I (perhaps naively) think that downvoting generally does.
No. Down voting isn't for getting people to think. It's for saying "No, this comment doesn't add anything to the conversation." Disagreeing with the sentiment is not good for down voting. A comment that you believe doesn't provide value, however, is.
If your goal is to get someone to think, it's better to communicate that in a comment.
> Do you think that calling people "a bunch of lemmings" makes for a better HN?
Yes, I do think calling lemmings lemmings is useful: that's what they are. You might disagree, but they are merely asking the same illogical and thoughtless questions. I feel my description was accurate and precise. Even the "stupid" remark, I feel, was justified. I actually wondered if a better word could be found, because I don't like using "stupid," but it's accurate. Gruber's questions to Google concerning Chrome's H.264 decision are stupid. This is especially true when you consider Gruber's history of defending Apple's decisions regarding it's support of Adobe.
> I've insulted plenty of people here in the past, maybe even you. For that I'm sorry. But I'm trying to be better than that, and although I don't think it's in evidence here, I'd like to believe that you are, too.
It's fairly easy: unless it's obviously not contributing to the discussion, assume the person is contributing. Even if you disagree. The language might be direct (or even harsh to some, as I admit "stupid" is), but for the type of people that visit HN, this is probably just our way of being as clear as possible. Even you had to comment on the specificity of whether you were horrified by my comment or the up voting of my comment. A point that is meaningless when you consider the point of the original comment.
This is, I fear, obvious to others when we place ourselves in social situations.
Wife:"Do you want to take the trash out for me?" HN Husband: "No." Wife:"Take out the trash, NOW." HN Husband: "Yes, dear."
I'd much prefer someone clearly state how they feel then use weasel words constantly.
Consider for a moment my comment prior to this one, where I called out your "I meant to downvote your comment." Yes, it was harsh, but only because yours was equally (in my mine) harsh. However, the net result is now a discussion of the merits of downvoting, language, and the overall improvement of HN. Alone, both our comments could be considered the worst of the worst of HN commentary. Off-topic and insulting. However, the result of this commentary is, I believe, a worthwhile discussion on comments.
Basically, could I have used something besides "a bunch of lemmings"? Sure, I suppose I could have. However, it made my point easily enough, and expressed my thoughts accurately.
Because it means I'll have to recommend that people use Internet Explorer.
So Google puts its own resources toward a plugin (Flash) that, itself, can play H.264 video. I find this interesting to say the least.
We don't know which one it is, but personally, I'd consider (1) to be more possible than (2).
This all ignores the fact that Google's involvement was improving the plugin experience alongside Mozilla, and it wasn't just benefit Flash.
Even still, all this is to say that it's still Adobe's version of Flash that goes into Chrome. Google isn't writing their own Flash implementation. What this means is that someone could build and H.264 plugin for Chrome. Google just doesn't want to be the person to do this. Considering the fact that handling this plugin would likely cost them money, I don't see a problem with their decision.
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.
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 don't see how you can call this article even approaching to be fair.
(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?)
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 <video> (most users won't understand the difference), but wouldn't tolerate lack of ability to play Farmville.
> WebM become the open standard (or codec) for video on the web, but the thing is: not right now
Unfortunately, "not right now" means "never". Google is already late with this decision, but as HTML5 <video> is not too widespread, there's still a possibility that they'll overturn the situation.
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.
I agree that cutting out Flash would have a MUCH bigger detrimental impact on the user experience than dropping H.264 does; mentioning this was just to point out that their seemingly altruistic-ideological claims about the “openness of the Web” were fundamentally fallacious. If openness of the web was truly so important to them, how do they justify dropping H.264 but not Flash, which is arguably far more threatening to the "openness of the web"?
> "Unfortunately, "not right now" means "never". Google is already late with this decision, but as HTML5 <video> is not too widespread, there's still a possibility that they'll overturn the situation."
I don't believe this is really true. WebM, as it stands, will at some point take off, be put to the test in court trials over patent litigation, probably come out clean or with a one-time-then-safe-forever settlement, and take over market share from H.264. This seems almost inevitable to me, simply because right now H.264 is the de-facto standard but it has nowhere to go under its current licensing scheme. It's not compatible with the web as it is today. So the only thing that would keep WebM from taking off is MPEG LA changing H.264 to be "web compatible" i.e. royalty-free for use on the Web. But if they do that, then there's no real need for WebM to take over, either.
> "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 & sell video with it."
How hard would this be to do? Is that all that prevents FF/Opera/Chrome from supporting h.264?
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) <video> effectively dies and Flash stays strong (Flash should play both sides to push this agenda).
Google should instead be working on a great free 3D codec.