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Google's dropping H.264 in Chrome is not a step backward for openness.

306 points by martythemaniak 16y ago

mikeryan 16y ago
This is a pretty poor rebuttal to what was actually a fairly well written (like it's opinion or not) article by Ars. Ars fairly clearly delineated the difference between "open standards" and "open/free to use" and this one mixes them up continuously This statement "Indeed, most sites offer different bandwidth options and video sizes. They are already converting the video!" shows a pretty clear lack of understanding on how most site's encoding processes work (you generally encode once at different bitrates, not once at one and others as you need them)
- DjDarkman 16y ago
  I have to disagree, the article points out a lot of flaws in the Ars. article. The premise of the article is self-contradictory: H.264 is patent encumbered, open web means open/free to use for anybody, these two don't relate to each other. I find it dubious to suggest the following: we should use it, just because most other people use it. Google dropping this codec actually helps prevent h.264's monopoly.
  - redial 16y ago
    "Google dropping this codec actually helps prevent h.264's monopoly." How about a Google monopoly? At least h.264 is owned by a number of different companies. Never mind that almost everyone agrees that it is the better codec.
    - Pewpewarrows 16y ago
      You can't have a monopoly on a product like WebM that's now open sourced.
      - recoiledsnake 16y ago
        In real life you easily can, because of incompatibilities with the existing software. Eg. Chrome and Android are technically open-source but their direction and development are completely governed by Google. If you make changes and are unable to convince Google to incorporate them, the video generated by your software will be incompatible with all the millions of WebM decoders out there.
        zppx 16y ago
        I do not care about WebM or H.264 since I dislike both, my comment will concern the license and the situation. WebM have a Apache style license, you can grab the source, fork it and develop your codec, and you're not even obligated to open a repository including your changes, they can remain closed. Google will not stop you from doing so and guarantees that he will not sue you asking for royalties, since a license like the Apache license gives the use of the patent for free. The case of Android and Chrome is simple, Google employes the majority of developers in both projects, however Google does not employes the majority of Linux kernel developers an as a result much of the Android code isn't in the kernel.org code. Similarly the directions of Webkit is decided by the two main committers: Google and Apple.
        recoiledsnake 16y ago
        I am talking about practicality or the chances of it happening. Anyone can do what they want, but if it's incompatible with the 800lb gorilla's offering, it's basically a moot point.
        Locke1689 16y ago
        Actually, recoiledsnake's scenario has already happened. The VP8 "spec" isn't a spec at all, it's just copy pasted C code. Unfortunately, they also chose to reuse the same code for the encoder and the decoder. This means bugs in either one can propagate into both. There was already one of these bugs found, fixed, and had a patch applied to the source tree. Google came in and reverted that patch because too much video had already been encoded with the bug in the encoder. This is exactly what happened with IE6, where bugs in the product become de facto requirements on the web. Maybe the H264 spec drones on and on but at least it's a spec. The VP8 "spec" is just a mandate from Google. A shitty one, at that. I'll take the small risk of patent litigation among only the biggest players for an open specification and standard any day. Of course, there's also the fact that H264 is way better than VP8 which it seems like no one cares about.
    - spiffworks 16y ago
      What does owning a video codec even mean if you make it royalty-free? Is there a concern that if webm becomes widely used Google will use its control of the code to harm competitors? In that case, you should know that the webm project is in fact run as a separate project from Google[1]. [1]http://www.webmproject.org/about/supporters/ http://www.webmproject.org/about/supporters/
    - haberman 16y ago
      > How about a Google monopoly? At least h.264 is owned by a number of different companies. It's amazing to me. In the 90s Microsoft's overt policy was "embrace, extend, extinguish," and it called the GPL a "cancer," the MPAA was launching war against DeCSS, and Amazon.com was flexing its one-click patent against competitors. Open source developers had no powerful allies. Now you have a powerful company like Google that releases millions of lines of open source, sponsors college students to work on open source, fights for openness standards in wireless spectrum auctions, fights for open standards like HTML5, open sources its entire mobile operating system, and in its latest move, buys a video codec company for $106 million and promptly pledges all of the patents for use by anybody. And yet some people would prefer the codec whose rights are effectively owned by a known patent troll (MPEG-LA) because "at least [it] is owned by a number of different companies." It goes to show that you can never please everyone.
      - Locke1689 16y ago
        I don't know what kind of fantasy world you live in where the only reason you could like H264 is because it's patented. I like H264 because VP8 is an inferior technology.
      - recoiledsnake 16y ago
        Why doesn't Google release the source code of the flavor of Linux that it uses after earning tens of billions basically leveraging Linux code? Google open sources things that are not central to it's business, just like every other company out there. MPEG-LA cannot be a patent troll let alone a known one, because it's a loose organization of companies that agree on a standard to prevent fragmentation of video and let people deal with one entity instead of a thousand. Those individual companies could be trolls. >fights for open standards like HTML5 Really? Then this move to remove support for H.264 will get Flash even more entrenched because it would be the easiest way for content providers to get WebM video working on IE9 and Safari. Flash has already announced upcoming support for WebM.
        irons 16y ago
        MPEG-LA cannot be a patent troll let alone a known one, because it's a loose organization of companies that agree on a standard to prevent fragmentation of video and let people deal with one entity instead of a thousand. Also, the licensing terms are fixed at a maximum 10% rise per five-year renewal. Given the lifespan of patents, that's a low ceiling.
  - eddanger 16y ago
    Why not drop Flash too?
    - Pewpewarrows 16y ago
      You clearly haven't read the article. Flash is a sandboxed plugin running alongside the browser. It's not the internals of a new and heatedly debated HTML tag, which ultimately has to be an open standard and format, and supported until HTML6 comes around in another decade. Choosing to drop experimental support for a closed, proprietary, and royalty-encumbered codec in a tag's specification that hasn't even been finalized by the W3C yet isn't even in the same universe as dropping support for an external plugin.
      - podperson 16y ago
        How is supporting arbitrary codecs via the <video> tag any different from supporting arbitrary fonts through CSS font-family?
        nitrogen 16y ago
        Supporting arbitrary codecs is more like supporting arbitrary font formats. Each separate codec uses its own (potentially vastly) different way of encoding video, and requires its own code to handle. Using the operating system facilities is too risky from a security standpoint (such as if someone finds an exploitable bug in the ancient Indeo codec).
    - memetichazard 16y ago
      Can't drop something you didn't have in the first place. As many have argued, it's disingenuous to treat Flash and the H.264 as being equal in this argument. One of these would be implemented into the browser rather than a plugin. One of these would incur a royalty cost. One of these has viable alternatives.
      - recoiledsnake 16y ago
        From http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/25/google-chrome-flash/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/25/google-chrome-flash/ Google Chrome Now Comes With Flash Built In 391 View Comments Robin Wauters Jun 25, 2010 Last March, Adobe and Google jointly announced that Flash Player would soon come built in to the latter’s Chrome browser, eliminating the need for users to download, install and update it separately.
  - tomlin 16y ago
    Those who seem to be opposed to Google's decision are often in the Apple camp (disclosure: I am in the Apple camp) but are also the same people who wish Flash to die because of it's closed/proprietary nature. So why can't we just envision ourselves embracing H.264 and picture what it'll be like in 10 years? Which camp will be trying to push it out the door because of licensing issues? There will be licensing and royalty issues. MPEG LA is a business at heart. Google is as well, certainly. But WebM could be ours instead of theirs, no? I think what people miss about WebM is that it isn't perfect - and no one is saying it is. It's not fully developed, but shouldn't we participate in fully developing WebM under an open source/royalty-free vision? Can't we all just get along?
    - pohl 16y ago
      So why can't we just envision ourselves embracing H.264 and picture what it'll be like in 10 years? You mean imagine when we're 2 or 3 years from the last of the H.264 patents expiring? At that time I would expect it to only be ditched for something that offers substantially better quality/bitrate.
    - kenjackson 16y ago
      There will be licensing and royalty issues. When a big company in Redmond says stuff like this, its called FUD. This is FUD, plain and simple. What technologies have patents, fees and/or licensing around them? H264, MP3, Flash, USB, Java, HDMI, CDMA, GSM, LTE, WiMax, Firewire, CD, DVD, BluRay, MP3, AMOLED, and many more. To argue that computing is going to collapse with the existence of all these is pure FUD. Its FUD when MS does it. It's FUD when Google or the Google camp does it. UPDATE: And I forgot a biggie, MPEG-2.
      - tomlin 16y ago
        Not so fast. These licensed technologies you speak of are not embedded within web browser standards. It's a big difference. Flash, for one, is a plugin. It hitches a ride with the browser, it's not part of its standardized, internal workings. Google probably will benefit financially from this change and the rhetoric from Google's camp probably is FUD. No different than what Apple is doing with it's proprietary App Store process or it's closed source OS or how Apple's camp (again, I'm apart of this camp) manages to stick-shift through an uncomfortable conversation about open source beyond WebKit. The difference is that WebM might also help open source as well. Just because it benefits a corporation doesn't necessarily mean it's the devil.
  - alanh 16y ago
    > Google dropping this codec actually helps prevent h.264's monopoly. A baseless assertion. It’s far more likely that most sites will continue using H.264, wrapping it in Flash for desktop users, and then sending it naked to mobile devices including iOS and most other video-capable phones. Economically, what is the incentive to do otherwise, as a publisher? How in the world do you figure otherwise? And can you please fucking stop pretending your own definition of “open” is the same as everyone else’s? Open ≠ free. Sometimes people use it that way. But there IS open source software (GPL’d, even) that is NOT free of cost (like many Wordpress themes & plugins), and there IS open source software that has been tripped up by PATENT TROLLS, and when we are talking about open SPECIFICATIONS the word “open” should be demonstrating that more than one party controls it — which IS the case with H.264 but NOT the case with VP8. So if you want to argue about openness, DEFINE your terms and ACCEPT others will not agree, but we CAN and SHOULD be dealing in terms of facts regarding who controls the spec and who can use it for free, not to mention what’s best for users (something Chrome is otherwise fantastically and fanatically obsessed with).
    - chc 16y ago
      I'm pretty sure when most people hear "open specification," they'll think it means "open for anyone to read and implement" or something along those lines, not "owned by a consortium of corporations rather than a single corporation." I know that's what people mean when they say H.264 is open, but "owned by a consortium" is not the usual connotation of "open."
      - mikeryan 16y ago
        I'm pretty sure when most people hear "open specification," they'll think it means "open for anyone to read and implement The shouldn't, thats not what it means. An open specification means that anyone can contribute to the authoring of the specification it has no bearing on licensing terms. Which is the OP's point "open" means a lot of different things.
deleted 16y ago
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eddanger 16y ago
As a rant this was mediocre, as a rebuttal this was lame.
- prumek 16y ago
  It's not a rant. It cleanly refutes the Ars Technica article. No rebuttal was really needed because most of the AT article was a red herring. The question is about openness, and h264 fails at that.
grayrest 16y ago
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?
- MiguelHudnandez 16y ago
  On desktops, falling back to flash for H.264 decoding is a pretty good strategy. On mobiles, though, Google's change has a bigger effect. Flash is abysmal (if existent) on Android devices--and now there is no clear solution that doesn't involve serving multiple encodings. Before this change, you could be comfortable that your H.264 HTML5 video would play on the majority of smartphones; the flash fallback was only necessary for desktop browsers.
  - eordano 16y ago
    There is no Chrome for smartphones, and so far no one has said anything about dropping H.264 on Android (although you can see it happening as soon as WebM extensions for ARM start being more popular). (edited: typo)
    - MiguelHudnandez 16y ago
      You are correct, but why would you imagine Google would treat Android differently? Even though they haven't announced any changes specific to Android, I expect Google's left and right hands to work together... eventually.
      - DrHankPym 16y ago
        Because Android is open and developed with the cellular carriers and manufacturers. If they want to add a H.264 chip, why would Google stop them?
deleted 16y ago
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recoiledsnake 16y ago
>I also find it puzzling that Google is being accused of giving users fewer choices, while Microsoft and Apple aren't even mentioned. They refuse to support WebM, after all. Err, Microsoft has already declared that WebM will be supported if a compatible plugin codec is installed on the machine. They just don't want patent trolls (successfully) suing them for shipping hundreds of WebM decoders. After all, Google is not indemnifying users of WebM from patents(like Android OEMs like HTC were left on their own when Apple decided to sued) like Microsoft does with Windows Phone 7. Opera is being disingenuous by spinning this as if Microsoft blocks WebM from being used in IE9 for the HTML5 video tag.
- k33l0r 16y ago
  It's worth pointing out that MPEG-LA also doesn't offer patent indemnification on H.264 or any of its other formats. I can't find where I originally read this, but EETimes mentions it at the end of this article: http://www.eetimes.com/design/other/4012977/MPEG-licensing-basics?pageNumber=1 http://www.eetimes.com/design/other/4012977/MPEG-licensing-b... "Also, MPEG LA does not offer any indemnification guaranteeing that its patents do not infringe someone else's patent rights."
  - alanh 16y ago
    Worth pointing out? Sure, but let’s not forget that what MPEG-LA actually does is license to you all the patents which H.264 is known to use — so you’re probably not infringing anything, barring of course the insanity the USPTO perpetuates… If you have a patent for part of the H.264 process, chances are, you’re part of the MPEG-LA and getting royalties through that organization already, legitimately, without suing anyone.
    - thomasmeeks 16y ago
      The patents WebM is known to use are also licensed. http://www.webmproject.org/license/additional/ http://www.webmproject.org/license/additional/
    - vetinari 16y ago
Timmy_C 16y ago
I like his point that the core of the debate should really be about choice. But then he lost me when he characterized the MPEG-LA as a ruthless cartel.
Entlin 16y ago
You know what we actually need? A h.264-buyout. Let's ask MPEG-LA how much they are planning to earn by the time their licence runs out (2024?). It will probably be ~200 Million or so. Then ask the whole internet to chip in. Result: all the open source people are happy, and we all get to use the higher quality codec in any application we can imagine. And we also get to keep our devices with their battery efficient dedicated h.264-decompression chips.
- aw3c2 16y ago
  Not going to happen. There are probably patents in there that they will use for the next codecs.
- jarek 16y ago
  Or we could just use VP8. All the open source people are happy, the codec will quickly improve, and the vast majority of your devices with their battery efficient dedicated H.264-decompression chips will be replaced by devices with battery efficient dedicated VP8 and H.264-decompression chips within three years. We also save 200 mill.
  - recoiledsnake 16y ago
    >the codec will quickly improve I am sorry, but codecs don't work like regular software. Fixing bugs and issues in the encoder could make the resulting video incompatible with older decoders (decoders and encoders are not easily updateable in firmware devices such as consoles, set top boxes, mobile devices etc.). Therefore it's important to have a proper spec in place and then improve encoders and decoders. A dump of C code is not a spec like Google did with VP8.
    - jarek 16y ago
      Fair enough. Then all of the above minus codec improving and plus video quality slightly worse than H.264. I mean, if you want to pitch in to buy the better one, be my guest. Maybe start a Kickstarter or something.
- 16y ago
cletus 16y ago
This is a weak article. > It's called bait and switch. Not really. If anything, it's the eventual use of market power for profiteering. > But it would become another closed de facto standard, just like IE6. Huh? IE6 is a browser not a standard. > This is comparing apples and oranges. Flash is a plugin, This is splitting hairs and a straw man. The user does not care or typically doesn't differentiate between something that's part of the browser and something that is a bundled plug-in. The user experience is basically the same. So any argument using a criteria about building in a proprietary and closed standard to the browser versus bundling a proprietary and closed plug-in is at somewhere between fatuous and disingenuous. > If you want to do any kind of video on the web, you don't have a choice. Flash is needed. WRONG. Bizarrely wrong in fact since we're arguing about the HTML5 container for video and supported codecs. Flash isn't involved. This isn't vapourware either. Modern browsers already support it. > it is much more likely that an open format will prevail in the end. If there are two dominant standards, sites will be faced with a choice: double-encode everything or pick one. Many have already picked H.264. What's more likely? Double-encoding or simply delivering H.264 to Chrome via a Flash (rather than HTML5) container? If anything, this move prolongs the existence of Flash. > Just because a format is widespread offline does not mean that it is suitable for use on the web. Is the author really suggesting H.264 a) isn't widespread on the Web and/or b) isn't suitable for use on the Web? Really? > In other words: The processing will always be there, and instead of re-processing to a slightly more compressed H.264 file for online play, it can be converted to an open format. If the author thinks this move will displace H.264 they are sadly mistaken. For one, the license fees for using H.264 are negligible for the largest players. For another, there is an enormous installed base of devices with hardware H.264 decoding. Hundreds of millions in fact, most notably the various Apple iDevices. These provide a compelling use for the continued use of H.264 in the long term. > As already explained, videos are typically re-encoded or processed in some way anyway. Yes but double the processing and double the storage are real issues. > Notice the word "plugin". It means that we're basically removing HTML5 video, and returning to plugins. All the benefits of native video disappear just like that What benefits are those exactly? At least for now the user experience, HTML5 video is still playing catch up to Flash video in terms of user experience. > If I am not mistaken, the share of open standards based browsers is growing at the expense of Internet Explorer. Worst case for IE is still about ~50%. That still makes it the single largest browser. Chrome's share exceeds Safari's (AFAIK) but the latter is still significant and I can't imagine it getting WebM support anytime soon. Apple are very much wedded to H.264 support by virtue of their devices if nothing else (anecdote: I played 6 hours of video on a plane on my iPad using 10% of the battery). > it is H.264 which takes away choice. By definition, not giving someone a choice takes away choices. All of the arguments for this move seem to be focused on the long term. That's fine but in the short term it will unarguably cause users and sites headaches. > I also find it puzzling that Google is being accused of giving users fewer choices, while Microsoft and Apple aren't even mentioned. Hold yourself to a higher standard (and, more importantly, preach those standards to others) and you will be the recipient of greater scrutiny. At best, the author's argument descends to "two wrongs make a right". Note: I'm saying arguing in favour of Flash. In fact, I consider the lack of Flash on my iDevices to be a feature rather than a limitation. Ironically this moves will likely prolong Flash and slow the adoption of HTML5 as a result.
eddieplan9 16y ago
If Google is truly whole-heartedly after the openness of web video, they should go ahead and disable H.264 playback in the bundled flash plugin in Chrome. It's technically just a simple wrap around the stock flash plugin. Given their cozy relationship with Adobe, they might even get a special binary from adobe, cut down the download size of Chrome and save bandwidth cost (which I believe is a greater saving than the $6.5 million)!
juiceandjuice 16y ago
The main problem with WebM/VP8 vs. H.264, especially in the face of the mobile internet device explosion, is hardware acceleration. Once devices start coming with native WebM acceleration, it won't be an issue. Given that Android is so popular and Google is looking to abandon H.264, it's inevitable that hardware acceleration will come to phones, probably in conjunction with H.264 acceleration (just like H.264 and H.263 right now) At that point, any ARM platform with a H.264 acceleration will include a WebM acceleration, and it would be more than trivial for Apple/Microsoft/whoever to implement WebM in their mobile browsers. A more interesting day will be when Google says "Android 3.x phones must have WebM acceleration"
- prumek 16y ago
  Most hardware will soon have webm support. All future Android devices, for example.
asnyder 16y ago
I'm actually curious about the differences in the formats. Is H.264 a better format? If so, does that mean that the web will always choose "free" over quality, if so, is there any incentive to create better embedded technologies, if a "free" albeit technically worse "knockoff" is available regardless of how open the other tech is, simply because it wants to be compensated when used by commercial entities that plan to profit off their work. For example, if they had non-commercial, GPLv2 and commercial licensing options.
- prumek 16y ago
  H264 is a closed format owned by an industry cartel. Webm is an open format owned by an open-source project. The web ALWAYS needs to choose open over everything else, because that's the whole foundation of the web. You want people to create html knockoffs? CSS knockoffs?
bbuffone 16y ago
This line here creeps me out -> "The market share of browsers that support H.264 exceeds WebM capable browsers" Google's online advertising monopoly is working on overdrive to ensure that won't happen.
brisance 16y ago
What about video support for existing Android devices? AFAIK WebM is only available for Gingerbread, which means the large majority of Android devices would have to fall back on Flash for Android. And that's not fully-baked yet. I can't see why this won't be turned into a lawsuit w.r.t. intentional degradation of performance/battery life.
prewett 16y ago
I'm kind of curious... It seems like the MPEG-LA is doing great work by creating all these video and audio compression codecs. MP3 is used by everybody, MPEG2 was good for the day, and now H.264 is even better. Plus, nobody else seems to be coming up with something compelling. Sure, there's WebM and VP8, but if I recall correctly, they are, at best, at parity with H.264. It seems like here's a good case of patents being useful: the MPEG people do research and create great codecs and we all pay them a $1 (or something) in licensing fees so we get small video. I'm all for open standards and free and Free software, but it seems like H.264 is a net will, compared to what we'd have without it. (Remember the days of huge .wav files and electronic .mod files before MP3 came out?)
pedanticfreak 16y ago
Chrome is 100% compliant without extraneous h264 support. The HTML5 spec contains no requirement for h264. If you want to blame anyone then blame the W3C working group for not specifying a codec. As of now h264 is on the same level as ActiveX and VBScript so you might as well ask for Chrome to support those, too. Granted, in this respect WebM is not perfect either. But at least WebM is meets the criteria to be a part of the W3C spec without modification whereas currently h264 does not. tl;dr Don't complain if Chrome uses WebM for <video>. My browser will only support Dirac and we're both right.
Derbasti 16y ago
Quite simply, what most people are missing here is that Chrome is removing H.264. How does removing a capability of a browser enhance its capabilities? Its nice that they add WebM, but there is just no practical reason for removing H.264.
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  > Its nice that they add WebM, but there is just no practical reason for removing H.264. They don't want to support H.264. You can add an H.264 plugin, but they don't want to support it internally. Put another way: Why should Apple be required to support Flash if they don't want to?

306 points by martythemaniak 16y ago

This is a pretty poor rebuttal to what was actually a fairly well written (like it's opinion or not) article by Ars. Ars fairly clearly delineated the difference between "open standards" and "open/free to use" and this one mixes them up continuously This statement "Indeed, most sites offer different bandwidth options and video sizes. They are already converting the video!" shows a pretty clear lack of understanding on how most site's encoding processes work (you generally encode once at different bitrates, not once at one and others as you need them)

DjDarkman 16y ago
I have to disagree, the article points out a lot of flaws in the Ars. article. The premise of the article is self-contradictory: H.264 is patent encumbered, open web means open/free to use for anybody, these two don't relate to each other. I find it dubious to suggest the following: we should use it, just because most other people use it. Google dropping this codec actually helps prevent h.264's monopoly.
- redial 16y ago
  "Google dropping this codec actually helps prevent h.264's monopoly." How about a Google monopoly? At least h.264 is owned by a number of different companies. Never mind that almost everyone agrees that it is the better codec.
  - Pewpewarrows 16y ago
    You can't have a monopoly on a product like WebM that's now open sourced.
    - recoiledsnake 16y ago
      In real life you easily can, because of incompatibilities with the existing software. Eg. Chrome and Android are technically open-source but their direction and development are completely governed by Google. If you make changes and are unable to convince Google to incorporate them, the video generated by your software will be incompatible with all the millions of WebM decoders out there.
      - zppx 16y ago
        I do not care about WebM or H.264 since I dislike both, my comment will concern the license and the situation. WebM have a Apache style license, you can grab the source, fork it and develop your codec, and you're not even obligated to open a repository including your changes, they can remain closed. Google will not stop you from doing so and guarantees that he will not sue you asking for royalties, since a license like the Apache license gives the use of the patent for free. The case of Android and Chrome is simple, Google employes the majority of developers in both projects, however Google does not employes the majority of Linux kernel developers an as a result much of the Android code isn't in the kernel.org code. Similarly the directions of Webkit is decided by the two main committers: Google and Apple.
        recoiledsnake 16y ago
        I am talking about practicality or the chances of it happening. Anyone can do what they want, but if it's incompatible with the 800lb gorilla's offering, it's basically a moot point.
        Locke1689 16y ago
        Actually, recoiledsnake's scenario has already happened. The VP8 "spec" isn't a spec at all, it's just copy pasted C code. Unfortunately, they also chose to reuse the same code for the encoder and the decoder. This means bugs in either one can propagate into both. There was already one of these bugs found, fixed, and had a patch applied to the source tree. Google came in and reverted that patch because too much video had already been encoded with the bug in the encoder. This is exactly what happened with IE6, where bugs in the product become de facto requirements on the web. Maybe the H264 spec drones on and on but at least it's a spec. The VP8 "spec" is just a mandate from Google. A shitty one, at that. I'll take the small risk of patent litigation among only the biggest players for an open specification and standard any day. Of course, there's also the fact that H264 is way better than VP8 which it seems like no one cares about.
  - spiffworks 16y ago
    What does owning a video codec even mean if you make it royalty-free? Is there a concern that if webm becomes widely used Google will use its control of the code to harm competitors? In that case, you should know that the webm project is in fact run as a separate project from Google[1]. [1]http://www.webmproject.org/about/supporters/ http://www.webmproject.org/about/supporters/
  - haberman 16y ago
    > How about a Google monopoly? At least h.264 is owned by a number of different companies. It's amazing to me. In the 90s Microsoft's overt policy was "embrace, extend, extinguish," and it called the GPL a "cancer," the MPAA was launching war against DeCSS, and Amazon.com was flexing its one-click patent against competitors. Open source developers had no powerful allies. Now you have a powerful company like Google that releases millions of lines of open source, sponsors college students to work on open source, fights for openness standards in wireless spectrum auctions, fights for open standards like HTML5, open sources its entire mobile operating system, and in its latest move, buys a video codec company for $106 million and promptly pledges all of the patents for use by anybody. And yet some people would prefer the codec whose rights are effectively owned by a known patent troll (MPEG-LA) because "at least [it] is owned by a number of different companies." It goes to show that you can never please everyone.
    - Locke1689 16y ago
      I don't know what kind of fantasy world you live in where the only reason you could like H264 is because it's patented. I like H264 because VP8 is an inferior technology.
    - recoiledsnake 16y ago
      Why doesn't Google release the source code of the flavor of Linux that it uses after earning tens of billions basically leveraging Linux code? Google open sources things that are not central to it's business, just like every other company out there. MPEG-LA cannot be a patent troll let alone a known one, because it's a loose organization of companies that agree on a standard to prevent fragmentation of video and let people deal with one entity instead of a thousand. Those individual companies could be trolls. >fights for open standards like HTML5 Really? Then this move to remove support for H.264 will get Flash even more entrenched because it would be the easiest way for content providers to get WebM video working on IE9 and Safari. Flash has already announced upcoming support for WebM.
      - irons 16y ago
        MPEG-LA cannot be a patent troll let alone a known one, because it's a loose organization of companies that agree on a standard to prevent fragmentation of video and let people deal with one entity instead of a thousand. Also, the licensing terms are fixed at a maximum 10% rise per five-year renewal. Given the lifespan of patents, that's a low ceiling.
- eddanger 16y ago
  Why not drop Flash too?
  - Pewpewarrows 16y ago
    You clearly haven't read the article. Flash is a sandboxed plugin running alongside the browser. It's not the internals of a new and heatedly debated HTML tag, which ultimately has to be an open standard and format, and supported until HTML6 comes around in another decade. Choosing to drop experimental support for a closed, proprietary, and royalty-encumbered codec in a tag's specification that hasn't even been finalized by the W3C yet isn't even in the same universe as dropping support for an external plugin.
    - podperson 16y ago
      How is supporting arbitrary codecs via the <video> tag any different from supporting arbitrary fonts through CSS font-family?
      - nitrogen 16y ago
        Supporting arbitrary codecs is more like supporting arbitrary font formats. Each separate codec uses its own (potentially vastly) different way of encoding video, and requires its own code to handle. Using the operating system facilities is too risky from a security standpoint (such as if someone finds an exploitable bug in the ancient Indeo codec).
  - memetichazard 16y ago
    Can't drop something you didn't have in the first place. As many have argued, it's disingenuous to treat Flash and the H.264 as being equal in this argument. One of these would be implemented into the browser rather than a plugin. One of these would incur a royalty cost. One of these has viable alternatives.
    - recoiledsnake 16y ago
      From http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/25/google-chrome-flash/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/25/google-chrome-flash/ Google Chrome Now Comes With Flash Built In 391 View Comments Robin Wauters Jun 25, 2010 Last March, Adobe and Google jointly announced that Flash Player would soon come built in to the latter’s Chrome browser, eliminating the need for users to download, install and update it separately.
- tomlin 16y ago
  Those who seem to be opposed to Google's decision are often in the Apple camp (disclosure: I am in the Apple camp) but are also the same people who wish Flash to die because of it's closed/proprietary nature. So why can't we just envision ourselves embracing H.264 and picture what it'll be like in 10 years? Which camp will be trying to push it out the door because of licensing issues? There will be licensing and royalty issues. MPEG LA is a business at heart. Google is as well, certainly. But WebM could be ours instead of theirs, no? I think what people miss about WebM is that it isn't perfect - and no one is saying it is. It's not fully developed, but shouldn't we participate in fully developing WebM under an open source/royalty-free vision? Can't we all just get along?
  - pohl 16y ago
    So why can't we just envision ourselves embracing H.264 and picture what it'll be like in 10 years? You mean imagine when we're 2 or 3 years from the last of the H.264 patents expiring? At that time I would expect it to only be ditched for something that offers substantially better quality/bitrate.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    There will be licensing and royalty issues. When a big company in Redmond says stuff like this, its called FUD. This is FUD, plain and simple. What technologies have patents, fees and/or licensing around them? H264, MP3, Flash, USB, Java, HDMI, CDMA, GSM, LTE, WiMax, Firewire, CD, DVD, BluRay, MP3, AMOLED, and many more. To argue that computing is going to collapse with the existence of all these is pure FUD. Its FUD when MS does it. It's FUD when Google or the Google camp does it. UPDATE: And I forgot a biggie, MPEG-2.
    - tomlin 16y ago
      Not so fast. These licensed technologies you speak of are not embedded within web browser standards. It's a big difference. Flash, for one, is a plugin. It hitches a ride with the browser, it's not part of its standardized, internal workings. Google probably will benefit financially from this change and the rhetoric from Google's camp probably is FUD. No different than what Apple is doing with it's proprietary App Store process or it's closed source OS or how Apple's camp (again, I'm apart of this camp) manages to stick-shift through an uncomfortable conversation about open source beyond WebKit. The difference is that WebM might also help open source as well. Just because it benefits a corporation doesn't necessarily mean it's the devil.
- alanh 16y ago
  > Google dropping this codec actually helps prevent h.264's monopoly. A baseless assertion. It’s far more likely that most sites will continue using H.264, wrapping it in Flash for desktop users, and then sending it naked to mobile devices including iOS and most other video-capable phones. Economically, what is the incentive to do otherwise, as a publisher? How in the world do you figure otherwise? And can you please fucking stop pretending your own definition of “open” is the same as everyone else’s? Open ≠ free. Sometimes people use it that way. But there IS open source software (GPL’d, even) that is NOT free of cost (like many Wordpress themes & plugins), and there IS open source software that has been tripped up by PATENT TROLLS, and when we are talking about open SPECIFICATIONS the word “open” should be demonstrating that more than one party controls it — which IS the case with H.264 but NOT the case with VP8. So if you want to argue about openness, DEFINE your terms and ACCEPT others will not agree, but we CAN and SHOULD be dealing in terms of facts regarding who controls the spec and who can use it for free, not to mention what’s best for users (something Chrome is otherwise fantastically and fanatically obsessed with).
  - chc 16y ago
    I'm pretty sure when most people hear "open specification," they'll think it means "open for anyone to read and implement" or something along those lines, not "owned by a consortium of corporations rather than a single corporation." I know that's what people mean when they say H.264 is open, but "owned by a consortium" is not the usual connotation of "open."
    - mikeryan 16y ago
      I'm pretty sure when most people hear "open specification," they'll think it means "open for anyone to read and implement The shouldn't, thats not what it means. An open specification means that anyone can contribute to the authoring of the specification it has no bearing on licensing terms. Which is the OP's point "open" means a lot of different things.

deleted 16y ago

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eddanger 16y ago

As a rant this was mediocre, as a rebuttal this was lame.

prumek 16y ago
It's not a rant. It cleanly refutes the Ars Technica article. No rebuttal was really needed because most of the AT article was a red herring. The question is about openness, and h264 fails at that.

grayrest 16y ago

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?

MiguelHudnandez 16y ago
On desktops, falling back to flash for H.264 decoding is a pretty good strategy. On mobiles, though, Google's change has a bigger effect. Flash is abysmal (if existent) on Android devices--and now there is no clear solution that doesn't involve serving multiple encodings. Before this change, you could be comfortable that your H.264 HTML5 video would play on the majority of smartphones; the flash fallback was only necessary for desktop browsers.
- eordano 16y ago
  There is no Chrome for smartphones, and so far no one has said anything about dropping H.264 on Android (although you can see it happening as soon as WebM extensions for ARM start being more popular). (edited: typo)
  - MiguelHudnandez 16y ago
    You are correct, but why would you imagine Google would treat Android differently? Even though they haven't announced any changes specific to Android, I expect Google's left and right hands to work together... eventually.
    - DrHankPym 16y ago
      Because Android is open and developed with the cellular carriers and manufacturers. If they want to add a H.264 chip, why would Google stop them?

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recoiledsnake 16y ago

>I also find it puzzling that Google is being accused of giving users fewer choices, while Microsoft and Apple aren't even mentioned. They refuse to support WebM, after all. Err, Microsoft has already declared that WebM will be supported if a compatible plugin codec is installed on the machine. They just don't want patent trolls (successfully) suing them for shipping hundreds of WebM decoders. After all, Google is not indemnifying users of WebM from patents(like Android OEMs like HTC were left on their own when Apple decided to sued) like Microsoft does with Windows Phone 7. Opera is being disingenuous by spinning this as if Microsoft blocks WebM from being used in IE9 for the HTML5 video tag.

k33l0r 16y ago
It's worth pointing out that MPEG-LA also doesn't offer patent indemnification on H.264 or any of its other formats. I can't find where I originally read this, but EETimes mentions it at the end of this article: http://www.eetimes.com/design/other/4012977/MPEG-licensing-basics?pageNumber=1 http://www.eetimes.com/design/other/4012977/MPEG-licensing-b... "Also, MPEG LA does not offer any indemnification guaranteeing that its patents do not infringe someone else's patent rights."
- alanh 16y ago
  Worth pointing out? Sure, but let’s not forget that what MPEG-LA actually does is license to you all the patents which H.264 is known to use — so you’re probably not infringing anything, barring of course the insanity the USPTO perpetuates… If you have a patent for part of the H.264 process, chances are, you’re part of the MPEG-LA and getting royalties through that organization already, legitimately, without suing anyone.
  - thomasmeeks 16y ago
    The patents WebM is known to use are also licensed. http://www.webmproject.org/license/additional/ http://www.webmproject.org/license/additional/
  - vetinari 16y ago

Timmy_C 16y ago

I like his point that the core of the debate should really be about choice. But then he lost me when he characterized the MPEG-LA as a ruthless cartel.

Entlin 16y ago

You know what we actually need? A h.264-buyout. Let's ask MPEG-LA how much they are planning to earn by the time their licence runs out (2024?). It will probably be ~200 Million or so. Then ask the whole internet to chip in. Result: all the open source people are happy, and we all get to use the higher quality codec in any application we can imagine. And we also get to keep our devices with their battery efficient dedicated h.264-decompression chips.

aw3c2 16y ago
Not going to happen. There are probably patents in there that they will use for the next codecs.
jarek 16y ago
Or we could just use VP8. All the open source people are happy, the codec will quickly improve, and the vast majority of your devices with their battery efficient dedicated H.264-decompression chips will be replaced by devices with battery efficient dedicated VP8 and H.264-decompression chips within three years. We also save 200 mill.
- recoiledsnake 16y ago
  >the codec will quickly improve I am sorry, but codecs don't work like regular software. Fixing bugs and issues in the encoder could make the resulting video incompatible with older decoders (decoders and encoders are not easily updateable in firmware devices such as consoles, set top boxes, mobile devices etc.). Therefore it's important to have a proper spec in place and then improve encoders and decoders. A dump of C code is not a spec like Google did with VP8.
  - jarek 16y ago
    Fair enough. Then all of the above minus codec improving and plus video quality slightly worse than H.264. I mean, if you want to pitch in to buy the better one, be my guest. Maybe start a Kickstarter or something.
16y ago

cletus 16y ago

This is a weak article. > It's called bait and switch. Not really. If anything, it's the eventual use of market power for profiteering. > But it would become another closed de facto standard, just like IE6. Huh? IE6 is a browser not a standard. > This is comparing apples and oranges. Flash is a plugin, This is splitting hairs and a straw man. The user does not care or typically doesn't differentiate between something that's part of the browser and something that is a bundled plug-in. The user experience is basically the same. So any argument using a criteria about building in a proprietary and closed standard to the browser versus bundling a proprietary and closed plug-in is at somewhere between fatuous and disingenuous. > If you want to do any kind of video on the web, you don't have a choice. Flash is needed. WRONG. Bizarrely wrong in fact since we're arguing about the HTML5 container for video and supported codecs. Flash isn't involved. This isn't vapourware either. Modern browsers already support it. > it is much more likely that an open format will prevail in the end. If there are two dominant standards, sites will be faced with a choice: double-encode everything or pick one. Many have already picked H.264. What's more likely? Double-encoding or simply delivering H.264 to Chrome via a Flash (rather than HTML5) container? If anything, this move prolongs the existence of Flash. > Just because a format is widespread offline does not mean that it is suitable for use on the web. Is the author really suggesting H.264 a) isn't widespread on the Web and/or b) isn't suitable for use on the Web? Really? > In other words: The processing will always be there, and instead of re-processing to a slightly more compressed H.264 file for online play, it can be converted to an open format. If the author thinks this move will displace H.264 they are sadly mistaken. For one, the license fees for using H.264 are negligible for the largest players. For another, there is an enormous installed base of devices with hardware H.264 decoding. Hundreds of millions in fact, most notably the various Apple iDevices. These provide a compelling use for the continued use of H.264 in the long term. > As already explained, videos are typically re-encoded or processed in some way anyway. Yes but double the processing and double the storage are real issues. > Notice the word "plugin". It means that we're basically removing HTML5 video, and returning to plugins. All the benefits of native video disappear just like that What benefits are those exactly? At least for now the user experience, HTML5 video is still playing catch up to Flash video in terms of user experience. > If I am not mistaken, the share of open standards based browsers is growing at the expense of Internet Explorer. Worst case for IE is still about ~50%. That still makes it the single largest browser. Chrome's share exceeds Safari's (AFAIK) but the latter is still significant and I can't imagine it getting WebM support anytime soon. Apple are very much wedded to H.264 support by virtue of their devices if nothing else (anecdote: I played 6 hours of video on a plane on my iPad using 10% of the battery). > it is H.264 which takes away choice. By definition, not giving someone a choice takes away choices. All of the arguments for this move seem to be focused on the long term. That's fine but in the short term it will unarguably cause users and sites headaches. > I also find it puzzling that Google is being accused of giving users fewer choices, while Microsoft and Apple aren't even mentioned. Hold yourself to a higher standard (and, more importantly, preach those standards to others) and you will be the recipient of greater scrutiny. At best, the author's argument descends to "two wrongs make a right". Note: I'm saying arguing in favour of Flash. In fact, I consider the lack of Flash on my iDevices to be a feature rather than a limitation. Ironically this moves will likely prolong Flash and slow the adoption of HTML5 as a result.

eddieplan9 16y ago

If Google is truly whole-heartedly after the openness of web video, they should go ahead and disable H.264 playback in the bundled flash plugin in Chrome. It's technically just a simple wrap around the stock flash plugin. Given their cozy relationship with Adobe, they might even get a special binary from adobe, cut down the download size of Chrome and save bandwidth cost (which I believe is a greater saving than the $6.5 million)!

juiceandjuice 16y ago

The main problem with WebM/VP8 vs. H.264, especially in the face of the mobile internet device explosion, is hardware acceleration. Once devices start coming with native WebM acceleration, it won't be an issue. Given that Android is so popular and Google is looking to abandon H.264, it's inevitable that hardware acceleration will come to phones, probably in conjunction with H.264 acceleration (just like H.264 and H.263 right now) At that point, any ARM platform with a H.264 acceleration will include a WebM acceleration, and it would be more than trivial for Apple/Microsoft/whoever to implement WebM in their mobile browsers. A more interesting day will be when Google says "Android 3.x phones must have WebM acceleration"

prumek 16y ago
Most hardware will soon have webm support. All future Android devices, for example.

asnyder 16y ago

I'm actually curious about the differences in the formats. Is H.264 a better format? If so, does that mean that the web will always choose "free" over quality, if so, is there any incentive to create better embedded technologies, if a "free" albeit technically worse "knockoff" is available regardless of how open the other tech is, simply because it wants to be compensated when used by commercial entities that plan to profit off their work. For example, if they had non-commercial, GPLv2 and commercial licensing options.

prumek 16y ago
H264 is a closed format owned by an industry cartel. Webm is an open format owned by an open-source project. The web ALWAYS needs to choose open over everything else, because that's the whole foundation of the web. You want people to create html knockoffs? CSS knockoffs?

bbuffone 16y ago

This line here creeps me out -> "The market share of browsers that support H.264 exceeds WebM capable browsers" Google's online advertising monopoly is working on overdrive to ensure that won't happen.

brisance 16y ago

What about video support for existing Android devices? AFAIK WebM is only available for Gingerbread, which means the large majority of Android devices would have to fall back on Flash for Android. And that's not fully-baked yet. I can't see why this won't be turned into a lawsuit w.r.t. intentional degradation of performance/battery life.

prewett 16y ago

I'm kind of curious... It seems like the MPEG-LA is doing great work by creating all these video and audio compression codecs. MP3 is used by everybody, MPEG2 was good for the day, and now H.264 is even better. Plus, nobody else seems to be coming up with something compelling. Sure, there's WebM and VP8, but if I recall correctly, they are, at best, at parity with H.264. It seems like here's a good case of patents being useful: the MPEG people do research and create great codecs and we all pay them a $1 (or something) in licensing fees so we get small video. I'm all for open standards and free and Free software, but it seems like H.264 is a net will, compared to what we'd have without it. (Remember the days of huge .wav files and electronic .mod files before MP3 came out?)

pedanticfreak 16y ago

Chrome is 100% compliant without extraneous h264 support. The HTML5 spec contains no requirement for h264. If you want to blame anyone then blame the W3C working group for not specifying a codec. As of now h264 is on the same level as ActiveX and VBScript so you might as well ask for Chrome to support those, too. Granted, in this respect WebM is not perfect either. But at least WebM is meets the criteria to be a part of the W3C spec without modification whereas currently h264 does not. tl;dr Don't complain if Chrome uses WebM for <video>. My browser will only support Dirac and we're both right.

Derbasti 16y ago

Quite simply, what most people are missing here is that Chrome is removing H.264. How does removing a capability of a browser enhance its capabilities? Its nice that they add WebM, but there is just no practical reason for removing H.264.

jasonlotito 16y ago
> Its nice that they add WebM, but there is just no practical reason for removing H.264. They don't want to support H.264. You can add an H.264 plugin, but they don't want to support it internally. Put another way: Why should Apple be required to support Flash if they don't want to?