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Comment by MBCook | Hacker News Reader

I agree. Google should be able to make whatever they want, declare it a standard by fiat since they own YouTube, shove it down everyone’s throat, and then get some partners so the standard claim isn’t as ridiculous.

If YouTube hadn’t pushed it, would it be popular? That’s a BIG question in my mind.

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It is - by far - the most efficient royalty-free video codec. That's got nothing whatever to do with YouTube.

Isn't HEVC comparable? It may lack some sheer bandwidth efficiency, but it seems to make up for that with less compute cost. And the entire M1 line has hardware and software HEVC support.

edit: Oh, you said royalty-free. Fair I guess? I guess I'd be pretty annoyed if I decided to encode some personal project I ended up making money from with my M1's HEVC encoder and got dinged by royalty police.

As of iOS 16 Safari supports WebM/VP9. So there is a parent free choice.

The codec patent is insane, you’re right. Pay to encode, pay to decode. Everybody pays.

I understand it is the most efficient (unless h265, which is patented, is better).

My point about YouTube is it gives Google power. They can say “we’re doing this with billions of hours of video” and people must follow. They can demand chips that encode faster. Or decode faster. Or say “No YouTube app on your custom gizmo device without VP1 support.”

They have the power to force changes in the market the way a startup or even Microsoft don’t. Those two would have to convince people the change is worth it to everyone. Google just does it, and others follow because it’s now there.

I’m basically arguing Google abused their position as opposed to Apple.

Apple is the king of abusing position with ios. No sideload app, payment must go through their 30% cut, no other browser allowed, etc..

Depending on your perspective, edging Facebook out of their own market as well (Mobile privacy)

For sure!

…but that doesn’t mean Google doesn’t also abuse their position.

Billion dollar corporations are not our friends, and the only interest they have is about what’s in our wallets.

Google released three different video codecs in the span of 6 years, and expected everyone to jump and support them, even in hardware.

Now that's abusing market position.

Timeline:

VP8: 2010

VP9: 2013

Google: we're going to slow down the release of new codecs to once every 18 months

VP10 became AV1: 2015

For some reason they've stopped, but I wouldn't put it past them to continue with fire and motion again.

Using open standards can almost never be abuse because nobody controls it. The reason Google wants it benefits everyone who streams video. MV3 is a better example. It's technically "open" but it is removing functionality. I don't think anyone here disagrees with you that Google has power. But someone always has power; in the tech world it's mostly uses for profit. In this case it happens to benefit everyone and we should be happy about it.

I mean maybe? But does that matter? It's by far the highest efficiency (in terms of bandwidth) open codec out there. It takes a lot of money to develop these sorts of things, especially given the patent risk, so I'm not sure how else you'd expect something like this to be created.

Netflix and Facebook were also early adopters of this. Between Google (Youtube), Facebook (various) and Netflix you have three of the biggest content providers. Other big ones like iQiyi and Vimeo jumped on it pretty quickly too.

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