The AVC (h.264) licensing rate according to ( http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65357&PageNum=2 http://www.streamingmedia.com/Ar

The AVC (h.264) licensing rate according to ( http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65357&PageNum=2 http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?Arti... ) goes up to $100,000 per year for over a million subscribers and can not exceed $5 million a year per enterprise. AAC, the audio codec that usually goes along with AVC might be $1,200,000 per year ( http://www.vialicensing.com/licensing/aac-fees.aspx http://www.vialicensing.com/licensing/aac-fees.aspx ). Given that the last AVC patents expire at 2028, there's seventeen years left where Google might still have to pay the annual fee that wouldn't exceed a few million dollars (though at the last few years when there's something like one patent that's still valid, I doubt the patent pool really could be enforced). The On2 acquisition was $124.6 million ( http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9159738/Google_closes_On2_acquisition_for_124.6M http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9159738/Google_closes... ) and probably a lot more for the ongoing development. Assuming, rather reasonably that there's 12 years left for AVC (that's doubtful, it'll probably be ancient in a few years), the recurring fees for YouTube's licensing would need to exceed $10 million a year for the argument to make sense.