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Just when I thought there was a chance that this topic would get a break on HN. I guess I appreciate the link, if Google hadn't tweeted about it (I'm assuming t

Just when I thought there was a chance that this topic would get a break on HN. I guess I appreciate the link, if Google hadn't tweeted about it (I'm assuming they will) I probably wouldn't have seen this link. Their answers are right, but it's the answers that aren't present, that are more telling. They don't address why they're removing it, why they chose to do it now, or whether or not they'll be consistent across their platforms. In my opinion, those are the only questions worth asking. Their answers about H.264 having little adoption with the <video> tag and about having to dually encode with the current HTML5 video scene anyway is spot on. WebM gets you native playback in every major browser but IE, with Flash fallback working in IE. There actually is a day, very soon that, Flash assisted, anything will play WebM. Of course, hardware adoption is still a huge question mark which I noticed Google also failed to discuss further in this post.

othermaciej 16y ago
Are you saying Safari doesn't count as a "major browser"?
- andybak 16y ago
  Don't most statistics put it at about 5%? I don't know if it's "major" but it's probably worthy of consideration.
  - othermaciej 16y ago
    ~6% worldwide, ~8% Europe, ~13% US according to to http://www.netmarketshare.com/ http://www.netmarketshare.com/ I would canonically count IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera as "major browsers".
- Kylekramer 16y ago
  Given that that it has 5-6% of market share, I think it is fair to leave it out of the major browsers. Not ignorable, but hardly major. It is iffy to even place Chrome as one, even though it seems like it will be in the future.
- drivebyacct2 16y ago
  Sorta (I didn't realize how much higher their share was than Opera's). If they choose not to implement a free, open source, easily available codec because they're Apple... then they can get lumped in with Internet Explorer and enjoy the fallback to Flash. I know Jobs is a big fan.
  - neild 16y ago
    Flash does not play WebM. How would "the fallback to Flash" work in this case?
    - sosuke 16y ago
      Not currently but WebM (VP8) will be supported in Flash (http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2010/05/adobe_support_for_vp8.html http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2010/05/adobe_support_f...)
- kenjackson 16y ago
  And lets be clear Safari on the desktop isn't the interesting one. Its the iOS devices. The iOS devices won't have Flash to fallback on either. So basically every iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch won't be able to watch your WebM videos AT ALL. There is no fallback, unless you encode to H264. Now maybe you can say that in this new HTML5 web world mobile Apple devices are irrelevant. I personally think you'd be wrong. H264 is the only codec that will generally be supported on every device, either directly or by Flash. From Chrome to Firefox to iOS to IE.
  - redthrowaway 16y ago
    If Youtube goes WebM/flash only, iOS will support WebM, period. Not being able to watch youtube videos would be like the Flash noise of a year ago, but worse, as there's no reason not to support WebM.
    - kenjackson 16y ago
      Apple and Jobs aren't shy about saying, "Nope, not doing it". Especially with those they view as enemies and trust me, Google is their arch enemy now, much moreso than Microsoft. A big reason they may not do it is backwards compat on HW accleration. They have a working solution on all devices today (H264). They're not likely to want to screw their old customers over a codec they aren't particularly fond of that was rammed down their throat by Google. Here's what I'd do if I were Apple, host my own video service, that serves H264 or Flash. MS and Apple throw their marketing weight and services around that (their various products auto upload to this new service). Now all iOS devices can play this video AND so can everyone else. YouTube dies a MySpace like death. If YouTube tries that I really think they may be sealing their own fate. To put it another way, people are NOT going to give up their iOS devices. But they will use a different video service.
      - rmc 16y ago
        If YouTube and all online video is WebM, then iOS will have no way to play 99% of videos (no flash remember). Apple can't afford for ipad to be "the device that doesn't play videos"
- rmc 16y ago
  Yes. Safari is a minor browser. Tiny market share.
drgath 16y ago
"or whether or not they'll be consistent across their platforms" Are you referring to other devices running Android? I don't think Google's stance is anti-h.264, it's anti anything that isn't royalty-free (forever) in the web stack. And I agree with that.
- drivebyacct2 16y ago
  Android, YouTube, etc. I suppose the distinction of it being the "web stack" is one thing, but doesn't it seem that YouTube should fall in line with their WebM-friendly stance? I can certainly get behind it, and despite my cynicism in regards to timing, etc, I'm behind the 1000lb gorilla using their weight to bring attention and popularity to freedom.
  - yanw 16y ago
    Evidently more of YouTube's videos are being encoded in WebM, previously it was just 720p videos uploaded after the WebM announcement in May 2010: http://imgur.com/rWIIf http://imgur.com/rWIIf
cpearce 16y ago
"Of course, hardware adoption is still a huge question mark which I noticed Google also failed to discuss further in this post." This has been discussed on the WebM blog: "The WebM/VP8 hardware decoder implementation has already been licensed to over twenty partners and is proven in silicon. We expect the first commercial chips to integrate our VP8 decoder IP to be available in the first quarter of 2011." http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/01/availability-of-webm-vp8-video-hardware.html http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/01/availability-of-webm-vp8... "They don't address why they're removing it, why they chose to do it now, or whether or not they'll be consistent across their platforms." Incidentally, months ago they've also blogged about why they'll keep YouTube using Flash, rather than HTML5: http://apiblog.youtube.com/2010/06/flash-and-html5-tag.html http://apiblog.youtube.com/2010/06/flash-and-html5-tag.html
- drivebyacct2 16y ago
  Oh I saw that, I meant more that there are millions of mobile (and non-mobile) devices that have hardware decoding that won't be able to play WebM video anywhere near as well as H.264.
  - weixiyen 16y ago
    I think people change phones pretty often, especially in the smartphone market, so the mobile devices should be the quickest to support WebM.
    - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
      The smartphone market is also growing quickly itself, which is why Android managed to equal the installed base of iPhones only a few months after the marketshare (i.e. current sales) rose above Apple's.
clark-kent 16y ago
WebM will work on all major browsers, IE9 by downloading and installing the VP8 codec on Windows, Safari by installing the codec for quicktime. Of course it will work on Opera, Firefox 4, and Chrome. The problem is getting it on iOS devices.

othermaciej 16y ago

Are you saying Safari doesn't count as a "major browser"?

andybak 16y ago
Don't most statistics put it at about 5%? I don't know if it's "major" but it's probably worthy of consideration.
- othermaciej 16y ago
  ~6% worldwide, ~8% Europe, ~13% US according to to http://www.netmarketshare.com/ http://www.netmarketshare.com/ I would canonically count IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera as "major browsers".
Kylekramer 16y ago
Given that that it has 5-6% of market share, I think it is fair to leave it out of the major browsers. Not ignorable, but hardly major. It is iffy to even place Chrome as one, even though it seems like it will be in the future.
drivebyacct2 16y ago
Sorta (I didn't realize how much higher their share was than Opera's). If they choose not to implement a free, open source, easily available codec because they're Apple... then they can get lumped in with Internet Explorer and enjoy the fallback to Flash. I know Jobs is a big fan.
- neild 16y ago
  Flash does not play WebM. How would "the fallback to Flash" work in this case?
  - sosuke 16y ago
    Not currently but WebM (VP8) will be supported in Flash (http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2010/05/adobe_support_for_vp8.html http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2010/05/adobe_support_f...)
kenjackson 16y ago
And lets be clear Safari on the desktop isn't the interesting one. Its the iOS devices. The iOS devices won't have Flash to fallback on either. So basically every iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch won't be able to watch your WebM videos AT ALL. There is no fallback, unless you encode to H264. Now maybe you can say that in this new HTML5 web world mobile Apple devices are irrelevant. I personally think you'd be wrong. H264 is the only codec that will generally be supported on every device, either directly or by Flash. From Chrome to Firefox to iOS to IE.
- redthrowaway 16y ago
  If Youtube goes WebM/flash only, iOS will support WebM, period. Not being able to watch youtube videos would be like the Flash noise of a year ago, but worse, as there's no reason not to support WebM.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    Apple and Jobs aren't shy about saying, "Nope, not doing it". Especially with those they view as enemies and trust me, Google is their arch enemy now, much moreso than Microsoft. A big reason they may not do it is backwards compat on HW accleration. They have a working solution on all devices today (H264). They're not likely to want to screw their old customers over a codec they aren't particularly fond of that was rammed down their throat by Google. Here's what I'd do if I were Apple, host my own video service, that serves H264 or Flash. MS and Apple throw their marketing weight and services around that (their various products auto upload to this new service). Now all iOS devices can play this video AND so can everyone else. YouTube dies a MySpace like death. If YouTube tries that I really think they may be sealing their own fate. To put it another way, people are NOT going to give up their iOS devices. But they will use a different video service.
    - rmc 16y ago
      If YouTube and all online video is WebM, then iOS will have no way to play 99% of videos (no flash remember). Apple can't afford for ipad to be "the device that doesn't play videos"
rmc 16y ago
Yes. Safari is a minor browser. Tiny market share.

drgath 16y ago

"or whether or not they'll be consistent across their platforms" Are you referring to other devices running Android? I don't think Google's stance is anti-h.264, it's anti anything that isn't royalty-free (forever) in the web stack. And I agree with that.

drivebyacct2 16y ago
Android, YouTube, etc. I suppose the distinction of it being the "web stack" is one thing, but doesn't it seem that YouTube should fall in line with their WebM-friendly stance? I can certainly get behind it, and despite my cynicism in regards to timing, etc, I'm behind the 1000lb gorilla using their weight to bring attention and popularity to freedom.
- yanw 16y ago
  Evidently more of YouTube's videos are being encoded in WebM, previously it was just 720p videos uploaded after the WebM announcement in May 2010: http://imgur.com/rWIIf http://imgur.com/rWIIf

cpearce 16y ago

"Of course, hardware adoption is still a huge question mark which I noticed Google also failed to discuss further in this post." This has been discussed on the WebM blog: "The WebM/VP8 hardware decoder implementation has already been licensed to over twenty partners and is proven in silicon. We expect the first commercial chips to integrate our VP8 decoder IP to be available in the first quarter of 2011." http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/01/availability-of-webm-vp8-video-hardware.html http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/01/availability-of-webm-vp8... "They don't address why they're removing it, why they chose to do it now, or whether or not they'll be consistent across their platforms." Incidentally, months ago they've also blogged about why they'll keep YouTube using Flash, rather than HTML5: http://apiblog.youtube.com/2010/06/flash-and-html5-tag.html http://apiblog.youtube.com/2010/06/flash-and-html5-tag.html

drivebyacct2 16y ago
Oh I saw that, I meant more that there are millions of mobile (and non-mobile) devices that have hardware decoding that won't be able to play WebM video anywhere near as well as H.264.
- weixiyen 16y ago
  I think people change phones pretty often, especially in the smartphone market, so the mobile devices should be the quickest to support WebM.
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    The smartphone market is also growing quickly itself, which is why Android managed to equal the installed base of iPhones only a few months after the marketshare (i.e. current sales) rose above Apple's.

clark-kent 16y ago

WebM will work on all major browsers, IE9 by downloading and installing the VP8 codec on Windows, Safari by installing the codec for quicktime. Of course it will work on Opera, Firefox 4, and Chrome. The problem is getting it on iOS devices.