Microsoft backs H.264. | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft backs H.264.

techcrunch.com

61 pointsdansingerman89 comments

> At first, they touted the maneuver as being all about supporting “open” formats. But if that’s the case, why not pull support for the Flash plug-in baked into every version of Chrome currently?

This is the single shittiest argument I've ever heard, and continue to hear.

1) Adobe isn't charging browser makers royalty or licensing fees to use Flash.

2) Are we really going to pull the "all or nothing" argument with a bunch of programmers and developers who, maybe more than anyone, are constantly driven by the force known as evolution? Just because they haven't removed Flash today doesn't mean they won't in the future. The probability of Google dumping Flash in the next 5 years is likely, perhaps not high. Furthermore, YouTube's HTML5 implementation doesn't exactly come across as fear for HTML5 video.

WebM needed to be here 5 years ago. H.264 should have been dumped before it got traction. Better late than never, no? Or in this case, off course - but constantly correcting.

It is very frustrating to hear this constantly touted as hypocrisy.

It is not.

Users and developers are free to use any and all Flash components. Flash itself is a published standard (although proprietary). You can create alternative VMs largely w/o caveat (the only one i've heard raised was some DRM junk having to do with Flash Media Server, which no one should use anyway).

There is no threat of patent licensing hovering over people who use Flash. That is not the case with H.264 encoding.

Furthermore, it is obnoxious that Flash is always uncritically trotted out as the only example of proprietary components in Chrome. What about Java plugins? Anything you want to say about Flash you can say about Java applets.

Please stop spreading FUD.

Also, Google didn't own WebM 5 years ago. It's hardly sensible for criticizing them for not moving more quickly on the issue.

> It's hardly sensible for criticizing them for not moving more quickly on the issue.

I'm not criticizing Google. I realize there was a time where WebM was VP8.

When I say WebM needed to be here 5 years ago, that's all I'm saying. No one company, standards body, org. is to blame.

> There is no threat of patent licensing hovering over people who use Flash. That is not the case with H.264 encoding.

Agreed. The individual user is not effected. The browser, and those who encode en masse for profit are exposed to potential pitfalls of the licensing. I'm not saying these royalties are debilitating or that the web will cripple into a video-less nothingness.

What I am saying is: If we can replace something proprietary with something more open, that is a good thing.

> Please stop spreading FUD.

It really seems as though you're spreading FUD by ascertaining my opinions as allegiance to one camp or another.

I'll admit I have a slight distaste for those who insist that H.264's penetration is reason alone to continue using it. Especially when I, up until a few years ago, was a lead Flash developer. Mainly due to Apple's insistence that Flash was the devil. I want you to see the ignorant, double-standard here. Flash and H.264 both have high penetration rates. Both are used extensively on the web and beyond. Yet only Flash must die? See how this is completely asinine?

Instead of pointing a finger at Apple and declare them the enemy of my camp, I examined the situation for benefits instead of fear.

Many thousand Flash developers will eventually hang up their tried-and-true tools in search for a better way. A more open, standards-abiding, creative community.

If we (Flash developers) can do it, I'm sure H,264 blowhards can do the same.

Sorry, my comment wasn't terribly clear, i am mainly agreeing with you!

I actually work in online video development, and the company i work for has determined even prior to the WebM hubbub that we were going to have to stick with a flash based player definitely for the short term, most likely for the medium term, and the long term is yet to be determined.

The thing is, that for all the monstrosities inflicted on the web by Adobe and Macromedia (may their children be afflicted with irritating skin diseases), they're neither business nor developer hostile (except through neglect).

They want people to use their products, and their existing revenue generating business is based around high penetration. The structure of their business and their incentives are such that pissing off the entire developer community would be a very bad thing (and you can see this in the fact that people like you are now former flash developers, and next to no one is willing to cop to being a current flash developer).

MPEGLA's incentives are different and their revenue sources are exclusively through licensing and enforcement.

So the bit of FUD that i find frustrating is the notion that the Flash or Java plugins are similar to codecs. They really aren't, except superficially.

The reduction ad Hitle^W Flash argument is totally flawed, yet it keeps repeating in every single article on "Google-and-WebM-vs-H.264" article.

I think there's a simple quality measurement of an article in this case. If article presents both pros and cons of Google's (Apple's, Microsoft's) decision - it's more likely the article's good. Otherwise it's probably one-sided.

The IE blog post in question (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/02/02/html5-and-web-...) seems more interesting than the media stories suggest - here's what appears to be the most substantive paragraph:

"Ultimately, Microsoft remains agnostic in terms of HTML5 video as long as there is clarity on the intellectual property issues. To make it clear that we are fully willing to participate in a resolution of these issues, Microsoft is willing to commit that we will never assert any patents on VP8 if Google will make a commitment to indemnify us and all other developers and customers who use VP8 in the future. We would only ask that we be able to use those patent rights if we are sued first by somebody else. If Google would prefer a patent pool approach, then we would also agree to join a patent pool for VP8 on reasonable licensing terms so long as Google joins the pool and is able to include all other major providers of playback software and devices."

The question of indemnification seems pertinent to me, but I've only been superficially following this issue - maybe it's a red herring and Google has good reason not to offer indemnification etc. I'm curious to see the case for that.

Indemnification is not likely, but MS asks for good reason. They probably suspect (or maybe knows) that WebM infringes on some patents.

The patent pool, just as it does with H264, gets every player in the game to effectively commit to not assert patents.

Good move by MS. And certainly shows that they're more willing to play than anyone else has demonstrated so far.

Microsoft has a really good point here. Google might be fine with phone manufactures getting sued over patent violations in Android, but that is not how Microsoft conducts business. If they included VP8 support in IE9, them and their partners can be sued for patent infringement, so the best they can due is work with Google to make a plugin. If Google offers indemnify over VP8, Microsoft can pass it along.

Indemnification is unheard of in codecs. Microsoft and SMPTE don't indemnify users of VC-1. MPEG-LA doesn't indemnify users of H.264. Google offering indemnification for WebM would effectively be suicide. They'd be painting themselves with a giant target and taunting every money-grubbing patent troll in existence.

When MPEG LA which holds several codec related patents in its pool cannot indemnify its H.264 licensees, Google indemnifying WebM sounds far fetched.

This is the classic case of saying 'I'm all for it as long as you can get everyone else onboard' when you believe that their chances of doing so are nil. If they managed to do it, your position would then be dictated by events anyway. Asking for 'indemnification' as an alternative demand shows just how high the bar is being set.

When you strip away fantasies like 'indemnify' and 'group-hug patent pool', the only significant line left is 'we are not willing to commit that we will never assert any patent rights on VP8', or "we just might sue".

I get really tired of people saying that the patents on H.264 are a "red herring." How is open source software like Firefox supposed to use H.264 if they have to pay massive licensing fees? That enforcement thus far has been weak to non-existent doesn't imply that it will continue to be so in the future.

For example, by trying to use the codec that is provided by the underlying operating system. The latest versions of both Windows and OS X ship with a H264 codec.

And what of Linux, and its variants like Android or MeeGo?

Android supports H.264.

I genuinely wonder if it will in the future. Does not the same reasons for pulling H264 from Chrome hold for the Android browser too?

Carriers will put it back.

Yes, Linux is a bit of a problem. In case of Android and MeeGo, the distributor or the manufacturer can deal with licensing issues and ship the device with a licensed codec.

The real problem is non-commercial desktop distributions such as Debian or Fedora; it could still check for the presence of x264 or FFmpeg (with h264 support) on the system and use it if it's available, and defer the responsibility of licensing to the user or distributor.

I'm not sure why Firefox has to support H.264 on all its platforms, but in this case it can, through Flash.

Even if it couldn't, why would it be a bad thing for Firefox to support OS-supplied codecs on OS X and Windows, and a set of built-in codecs, such as WebM, on Linux?

OS codecs are an unquantifiable security risk, since their source code is not available to Mozilla.

Just a theory, but I think before Google's move, hardware decoder would be ubiquitous. Think ION. Think Atom. Think Tegra 2.

H.264 is readily available on Linux.

We had that situation back in the early days of modern mainstream internet. Remember Real Player? WMV embedding? It was not fun.

H.264 patents are a red herring because WebM is not known to be patent free either. The assumption is that patent holders are waiting for WebM to gain traction before springing the lawsuits.

The devil you know versus the devil you don't.

Is there any non trivial piece of software that's known to be patent free? Isn't it probable, even likely, that there are additional patent holders who'll come after H.264 implementations eventually?

Possible, but not probable. H.264 has been researched extensively prior to it being broadly used. Compare that with WebM, which was not vetted in the same way H.264 was.

> The devil you know versus the devil you don't.

You don't know the H.264 devil any better. It's just as likely that some lone patent wolf will come forward and go after H.264. It's simply FUD to say that WebM is somehow more susceptible. Just because MPEG-LA makes you pay for their set of patents doesn't mean they're protecting you against patents they don't hold.

I'd say you know the H264 devil a little better. Why? Because its spec and patents have been extremely well documented for a decade (or so), commented on, and implemented (there are at least 10 implementations I know of).

Whereas WebM's details first came to light less than a year ago.

You're right that it is possible that either still violate some patent out in the wild. BUT if you were to weigh the odds -- a nearly decade old open standard technology that has openly solicited and worked to get all potential patent holders in the pool OR a technology closed and proprietary until last year. You really call even money on that?

It seems to be widely accepted that WebM is a minor variation on H.264 with changes specifically designed to avoid the H.264 patents, which as you mention have been openly published and well documented for years.

Since large segments of H.264 were simply dropped for WebM, apparently there's only about 49 H.264 patents total (out of over a thousand) that could even remotely apply. That seems a reasonable number for On2 to work around, and for Google (and everyone else listed on their supporters page)'s lawyers to double check.

So now we are speculating about a random patent troll who happens to hold a patent that doesn't read on H.264 but does read on a simplified version of H.264 with some minor patent avoiding variations. Seems to me that if you're arguing H.264 is clean, then so is WebM.

Your interpretation doesn't match those of people who have analyzed it. The problem with WebM is that it may infringe on H264 patents! And its not clear they have done enough to avoid the problems. H264 has come together to form a very strong patent pool. None of the patents can be asserted against H264 (nor can the partner companies in general), but any of them can be asserted against WebM.

Read JGG's account, which is still the best account to date at: http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377

Some quotes:

"But as noted in my previous post, merely being published by Google doesn’t guarantee that it is. Microsoft did similar a few years ago with the release of VC-1, which was claimed to be patent-free but within mere months after release, a whole bunch of companies claimed patents on it and soon enough a patent pool was formed."

"VP8 is simply way too similar to H.264: a pithy, if slightly inaccurate, description of VP8 would be "H.264 Baseline Profile with a better entropy coder". Even VC-1 differed more from H.264 than VP8 does, and even VC-1 didn’t manage to escape the clutches of software patents."

"Most importantly, Google has not released any justifications for why the various parts of VP8 do not violate patents, as Sun did with their OMS standard: such information would certainly cut down on speculation and make it more clear what their position actually is."

And not about patents, but the quality of the spec:

"The spec consists largely of C code copy-pasted from the VP8 source code up to and including TODOs, optimizations, and even C-specific hacks, such as workarounds for the undefined behavior of signed right shift on negative numbers. In many places it is simply outright opaque. Copy-pasted C code is not a spec. I may have complained about the H.264 spec being overly verbose, but at least it’s precise. The VP8 spec, by comparison, is imprecise, unclear, and overly short, leaving many portions of the format very vaguely explained. Some parts even explicitly refuse to fully explain a particular feature, pointing to highly-optimized, nigh-impossible-to-understand reference code for an explanation. There’s no way in hell anyone could write a decoder solely with this spec alone."

But maybe Google will fix it? Ummm think again;

"Update: it seems that Google is not open to changing the spec: it is apparently "final", complete with all its flaws."

I just don't see how one can feel equally comfortable with WebM.

Here's an analysis, which builds on the analysis in your link. I think it's obvious which one makes more sense if you read both:

http://carlodaffara.conecta.it/an-analysis-of-webm-and-its-p...

Some highlights:

"Dark Shikari makes several considerations, some related to the implementation itself, and many related to its “patent status”. For example: “VP8’s intra prediction is basically ripped off wholesale from H.264″, without mentioning that the intra prediction mode is actually pre-dating H264; actually, it was part of Nokia MVC proposal and H263++ extensions published in 2000, and the specific WebM implementation is different from the one mentioned in the “essential patents” of H264 as specified by the MPEG-LA.

If you go through the post, you will find lots of curious mentions of “sub-optimal” choices:

[big list of the identical features with minor differences between H.264 and VP8]

What we can obtain from this (very thorough – thanks, Jason!) analysis is the fact that from my point of view it is clear that On2 was actually aware of patents, and tried very hard to avoid them. It is also clear that this is in no way an assurance that there are no situation of patent infringements, only that it seems that due diligence was performed. Also, WebM is not comparable to H264 in terms of technical sophistication (it is more in line with MPEG4/VC1) but this is clearly done to avoid recent patents; some of the patents on older specification are already expired (for example, all France Telecom patents on H264 are expired)."

There's also a follow up here which discusses the thought process behind the 49 potential H.264 patents:

http://carlodaffara.conecta.it/on-webm-again-freedom-quality...

That's not an analysis, but a commentary on the work Jason did.

But he says a lot of BS, like, "In fact, one of the most brain damaged things of the current software patent situation is the fact that if a company performs a patent search and finds a potential infringing patent it may incur in additional damages for willful infringement (called “treble damages”). So, the actual approach is to perform the same analysis, try to work around any potential infringing patent, and for those close enough cases that cannot be avoided try to steer away as much as possible. So, calling Google out for releasing the study on possible patent infringement is something that has no sense at all: they will never release it to the public."

Patent law makes it VERY clear that treble damages occur with WILLFUL infringement. Good faith efforts, the inevitably fail, won't be subject to treble damages.

It seems like he's bending over backwards to show that Google shouldn't disclose anything, which is absurd.

His opinion that the suboptimal choices means that WebM has avoided the H264 patents seems very suspect to me. And contradictory, because if they did do what he said, and did accidentally infringe, by his (incorrect) logic they'd be liable for treble damages. Blech.

Mozilla's on the record as being told by their counsel not to openly publish patent research they did for Theora. They weren't happy about it, because it opens them up to FUD, but we all know patent law is messed up, one more absurdity shouldn't surprise us.

What I'd "call even money on" is that patent holders who are looking for a piece of the video decoding royalty pie would have jumped on the MPEG-LA gravy train already. I also would bet that Google's legal team knows what they're doing.

patent holders who are looking for a piece of the video decoding royalty pie would have jumped on the MPEG-LA gravy train already.

They have... they're called members of the pool. The same ones that came after Microsoft when MS did VC-1. The same ones who will come after WebM.

Google already knows about them. And has bet the future on WebM anyway. I trust Google's legal counsel more than I trust you.

What if H.264 infringes on some of Google's patents? Google could countersue and go after members of MPEG-LA, or even end-users of H.264. Google's patent license only covers Google's WebM implementation.

You do realize that Google's legal counsel has very little say in this. Google's engineers are making the call and the counsel is just providing legal advice. The legal counsel doesn't know what is infringing on what.

With that said, you'd probably say that you trust Google's engineers more than me. I'd hope so. You have no idea who I am.

> Google's engineers are making the call and the counsel is just providing legal advice. The legal counsel doesn't know what is infringing on what.

[citation needed]

What makes you think that a big company with enormous potential for legal liability would let engineers make decisions that are of legal consequence, like whether to aggressively push a video format amidst a patent minefield?

Do you think the engineers wrote the patent license too?

If so then what is the reason Google is not providing patent indemnification? If it does, MS would bundle it with IE9 (perhaps even the OS) instantly allowing about 40% of worldwide to seamlessly watch WebM content.

I guess Google is afraid of being sued for billions for the hundreds of millions of installs that Windows and/or IE9 ship.

> If so then what is the reason Google is not providing patent indemnification?

You could ask the same question of MPEG-LA: they don't indemnify their customers either.

> If it does, MS would bundle it with IE9

That is not at all clear. I would even call it unlikely.

> I guess Google is afraid of being sued for billions

I guess MPEG-LA is afraid of the same thing.

You could ask the same question of MPEG-LA: they don't indemnify their customers either.

But Microsoft does. Why doesn't Google?

I wasn't aware that they did -- interesting. But actually that only covers "any Microsoft software licensed for a fee for your end use." [0] Since Google does not charge end-users for any of its software that it distributes, you could argue that Google's indemnification program is just as extensive as Microsoft's.

[0] http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/D/0/9D0A6265-A509-4...

Really? That's your argument? If that's your argument an equally valid one is you get what you pay for. ;-)

As a consumer you stick with WebM and all that the royalty freeness buys you. I'll stick with H264 knowing that MS has already paid the royalty, the patent pool has virtually every player in the game, and MS indemnifies me as an end user. We'll call it a day.

Sounds fine if all you want to do is go home, watch TV, and surf the Internet. But if that's what you're doing, you're probably not going to get sued anyway.

This is a community of entrepreneurs. What's at stake here is the next YouTube. If you're just a fledgling startup that shows videos online, can you afford a sudden surge in popularity, or will it bankrupt you in patent royalties? Can you estimate your future costs in royalties, or is it subject to change when MPEG-LA thinks it can get some more money from you? If you want to use video in some disruptive new medium, what will MPEG-LA decide to charge for that once they see its promise? Or will they refuse to license the patents at all for this purpose, in favor of giving MPEG-LA members exclusive dibs on this new medium?

I think the MPEG-LA's terms are pretty good for the next Youtube. First free web video is free. If you charge your customers, for the first 100K subscribers, it's free.

100,001 - 250,000 subscribers/year = $25,000; 250,001 - 500,000 subscribers/year = $50,000; 500,001 - 1,000,000 subscribers/year = $75,000; and more than 1,000,000 subscribers/year = $100,000.

That's about 10 to 25 cents per paying customer PER YEAR with first 100K subscribers free. And there are limits and caps on the increases.

Are you Kidding, Court Corruption STOPS the Real Inventors of the MPEG LA video Decoding - iViewit Technology invented it and has no rights.. DeniedPatent.com

For the record, it appears Mozilla, Inc is very rich and could almost certainly just afford the fees and be done with it. That way they'd close the loop and we'd all adopt h264, pay the money, and be on our way to HTML5 video.

It's clear that the adoption of webm is about control and changing the conversation: Google & Mozilla want to drive the direction and own the space. Let's not forget, mozilla owns the 'open source' identity and needs to keep it going, whilst Google has a significantly vested interest with YouTube.

I can't afford to make a popular browser, though. Sure I can fork one in a second, but if people started using it a lot, I'd be screwed.

Only make a popular browser if you're rich enough to support H.264, I think is the lesson.

Both commonly used OS's (Windows and Mac) have OS-level services to play H.264. No need for browser to license anything.

In this instance, Mozilla has gone out of it's way to not use the OS-level facility, forcing Microsoft to write a plugin to make that happen.

Well, FWIW, I disagree with Firefox not using it if its free to use.

However, I still totally object to H.264 being a requirement in the spec.

The problem isn't financial; it's ideological. The GPL says that no additional restrictions must be placed on the end user. The H.264 license says that only personal and non-commercial use is allowed.

I'm not sure whether they legally conflict, but the H.264 license is obviously against the spirit of the GPL.

Sure but the license itself does imply that. The price licensees pay is pro-rated based on usage but is also capped at 6.5 million until 2015. The license will be renewed every 5 years but will not increase more than 10%:

The first term of the License runs through 2010, but the License will be renewable for successive five-year periods for the life of any Portfolio patent on reasonable terms and conditions which may take into account prevailing market conditions, changes in technological environment and available commercial products at the time, but for the protection of licensees, royalty rates applicable to specific license grants or specific licensed products will not increase by more than ten percent (10%) at each renewal.

(PDF link:) http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/AVC_TermsS...

They used to raise the cap by 10% every year, then last year it jumped 30% and got fixed for the next 5 years. I assume that added clarity was a concession to pressure from WebM even though it meant a higher price hike right now. They also specifically added text clarifying that the cap was not limited to a 10% yearly rise so the max amount payable is explicity unknown and unlimited.

That's a good point. Here is the payment history:

The maximum annual royalty (“cap”) for an Enterprise (commonly controlled Legal Entities) is $3.5 million per year 2005-2006, $4.25 million per year 2007-08, $5 million per year 2009-10, and $6.5 million per year in 2011-15.

…and you're right that there is a footnote saying. "Annual royalty caps are not subject to the 10% limitation" which is important.

I do find it a bit strange to hear people say the license fees are unknown. Even if you assume an unlimited cap, you can schedule out what the pro-rated fees will look like for you for the next 5-10 years based on your projected growth. You can argue that they are too high, but I don't think you can argue that they are unknown. If nothing else they are bounded on the high end.

Are you saying that last year, you could have predicted the licence fee cap would have been $6.5 million and not 5.5 or 7.5 or 10.5? If you couldn't then it was unknown until they announced it. Similarly, what do you predict it will be in 5 years and each of the next 20 years till the patents run out? Are you sure?

No, I'm agreeing that you're right that the cap is effectively unknown. I missed that footnote (shame on me). My point is that even with an unknown cap, the license rates are predictable for the foreseeable future:

    Free under 100k units
    $0.20 per unit above 100k
    $0.10 per unit above 5 million units

Now, I'm no fan of software patents and I wish they would be done away with. But given the choice between that and the practical/technical/patent uncertainty of webM I don't feel like those are massive payments.

I'm glad Google open sourced the on2 codec and I can even see that maybe the H.264 prices have been influenced by that move. But from a practical standpoint, I think Apple and Microsoft are making a reasonable move. People say it's short-sighted, but I think they are relatively protected.

The IE blog post, http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/02/02/html5-and-web-..., also mentioned something I'd never seen before. MS indemnifies Windows users for included software, which would include H264. And is probably an obvious reason why WebM isn't shipped as part of Windows (client and server).

That'a s pretty big frickin deal. I thought indemnification was off the table, but reading this Google has at least got to say that end users of WebM are indemnified. I honestly don't think they are willing to take that risk given the patent state of WebM.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/D/0/9D0A6265-A509-4...

And they just released a Chrome plugin (like they recently did for firefox):

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/interoperability/archive/2011/02/01/...

The link to the actual post referenced in the techcrunch article but not linked to: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/02/02/html5-and-web-...

> by turning their back on H.264, Google is ensuring that Flash will continue to remain the dominant force in web video for years to come

Even if Google didn't support the video tag at all, people can still use IE and Safari, right? Its looking like H.264 is going to be the dominant codec, after all, so IE and Safari will support it. If you want it on another browser, you'll need a plugin, sorry. That could be Flash, or it could be something else.

> but the issue here is that we need the HTML5 standard to fully support H.264, and that’s simply not going to happen without Google on board.

No. The answer is no, with or without Google. It's a bad idea to have a per-unit fee for distributing a standards-compliant browser. Go ahead and buy it for the browser you're building--I'm fine with that--but don't make it a requirement.

And to anyone who says, "$0.20 isn't that much", you must agree to back it in cash. If you say you'll personally cover the licensing fees for anyone who asks, well, then I'll reconsider.

Here's what I'm not clear on: why did we scrap the whole Ogg Theora thing in favor of WebM at all? Isn't Ogg actually unencumbered by lawsuit-fodder?

As I understand, Ogg Theora is an odd format (in a way that makes it exceptionally hard to implement in hardware, for instance) that doesn't perform very well.

Ogg (like mp4 or mov) is actually a container format that can have Theora or WebM compressed media inside.

WebM is a container format for VP8. Ogg can’t contain WebM but could contain VP8 as well.

Theora is derived from VP3 which, as the name suggests, is a predecessor to VP8 which Google recently renamed to WebM. As such, VP3 is inferior to VP8 (WebM) and a huge step backwards from H.264.

One could also say that as long as software patents exist, no codec can ever be unencumbered by lawsuit-fodder.

Of course Microsoft and Apple support H.264. They both stand to benefit:

http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensors.aspx

Of course Firefox and Opera support WebM. Revenues of Mozilla Foundation and Opera Software depend on Google.

Firefox and Opera had chosen VP8 in favor of H.264 before Chrome did.

But not before Google.

I agree with you as well, but I don't see why my point doesn't stand. I'm not saying I agree with one side or the other just that everyone has a stake in this game.

Microsoft has stated in the past that they pay more into the Pool each year than they get out in payments for the patents they have in the Pool. I forget how many patents Microsoft has in the pool, but it's more than Apple, who only has one patent in there, which implies that Apple is getting even less money out than Microsoft.

In other words, I doubt either company is directly making a profit on h.264 licensing payments.

Until the W3C officially adopts a royalty free codec as part of the HTML standard, Google and Mozilla should assume HTML video is dead. They might as well make the <video> tag inoperable by default. Just parse it and ignore it.

Of course, Google owns VP8. So they are pushing it so it might become a defacto standard that later gets officially adopted. Despite meeting the requirements to be part of the HTML spec, without the official backing of the W3C it is no different than any other out of spec extension to HTML.

Maybe this is a dumb question, but what difference does it make what's in the spec? People will pick the browser that plays the videos they want to see over the one that follows the spec every time.

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2009/09/123_52401.h...

South Korea built vast infrastructure around IE6 and ActiveX. Just a year ago a full 60% of Korean traffic still came from IE6. Why? Because they relied heavily on features that were not in the spec that Microsoft deprecated and nobody else can or will implement.

An extreme example. But it highlights the importance of sticking to specs that can be freely implemented by anyone. Five years from now when MPEGLA decides to throw down the crap hammer do you want to have to keep around old Safari binaries just for sites that migrated to h264 while the rest of the web moved on?

I don't think it is the same thing. Unlike ActiveX, video can be re-encoded (fairly easily I guess if you are going to use 2016 technology).

That sounds like an argument for free and open formats in general more than an argument for strict obedience to the W3C, but I see your point.

At the time those Korean sites were built, I'm guessing there was no spec nor open alternative to do what they were trying to do.

The W3C (via the WHAT WG) did have a royalty free codec as part of the spec in Ogg Theora. It was removed because it became clear that key players (specifically Nokia and Apple) were refusing to implement it, spec or no. A spec that doesn’t match what people are willing to implement isn’t a very good spec.

Let me consult my list of companies which make money from being MPEG LA licensors: Apple Cisco Daewoo Dolby Fuijitsu HP Hitachi Philips LG Microsoft Mitsubishi NTT Panasonic Samsung Sharp Siemens Sony Ericsson Toshiba Reference: http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensors.aspx

I am SHOCKED to hear that Microsoft would like to continue receiving royalties from all those H.264 license fees and doesn't give a toss about open standards.

"Microsoft pays into MPEG-LA about twice as much as it receives back for rights to H.264." http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/05/03/follow-up-on-h...

So Microsoft gets a 50% discount on a tax that already benefits larger, incumbent companies by protecting them from up and coming competitors and it's incompatible with many open source and freeware business models used by competitors. And this is presented as if they're some kind of selfless saint for paying into this racket?

Bingo. Microsoft and Apple support H.264 for the same reasons that Walmart supports minimum wage increases and Mattel supports extensive product testing regulations.

If you read Microsoft's blog post, Microsoft is not taking sides on this like every other player is.

All they want is not to be liable for billions in damages if WebM is found infringing on some company's patents. They're supporting it via plugins if the user installs and are ready to bundle it with the OS if Google or someone else provides indemnification. They are relatively comfortable with H.264 because most of the major players are already in the pool and the standard has been around for a while, reducing chances of patent suits.

The ball is in Google's court now. They and their supporters are all over the internet saying that WebM has been vetted for patent infringement etc. Now they need to tell us why their belief is not enough to indemnify distributors and end users.

No, they support H.264 because it is THE video standard. Not supporting H.264 for video would be like not supporting JPEG for photographs.

Let me consult my list of companies which would benefit from WebM: Google

Don't pretend for one second this is actually about "open standards".

Actually, Mozilla and Opera would also benefit from not having to license H264. Other than the lack of license fees, how would Google benefit?

They get to screw Apple. Apple has built an existing HW ecosystem and has a highly tuned sw tools for H264. With WebM Google gets to say, "Throw all that away -- now you're behind us technologically Apple."

Regarding Apple's "highly tuned sw tools for H264", you know that their H.264 encoder in Quicktime/iTunes is abysmal, right?

There's an x264 plugin for Quicktime which is much preferable to the encoders built into most proprietary products, but Apple's is particularly bad.

And Apple is telling Google GFY and taking record profits. Why is that state of affairs going to change?

Your list of companies is rather incomplete, and should include every non-H264-licensing company on the planet that ever created a training or marketing video.

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