5 ms·

I was discussing this with some people yesterday. I find it incredibly frustrating that the Grubers of the world have spent months attacking Google for supporti

I was discussing this with some people yesterday. I find it incredibly frustrating that the Grubers of the world have spent months attacking Google for supporting the evil, closed Flash, but then manage to spin Google dropping a closed format in favor of an open one as evil and using it as a roundabout way of continuing to hate on Flash. The fact of the matter is that Flash is an entrenched, defacto standard and isn't going away any time soon. HTML5 isn't anywhere close to completely replacing Flash even if it were to disappear in a puff of logic right this moment. HTML5 <video> is in its infancy, and isn't being perpetuated by sheer momentum like Flash. Further, H.264 was a complete non-starter for Mozilla, and Firefox holds nearly 20% of the market. Using H.264 for HTML5 <video> would have guaranteed market segmentation and hurt the chances of a truly open future. This argument about dropping H.264 propagating Flash in the short term is just insanity to me. Flash is already here for the short term. We need to focus on our long-term options for moving to something more open, and the whining about this decision strikes me as totally myopic at best and blind fanboyism at worst.

jasonlotito 16y ago
Google supports Adobe Flash, and has dropped support for Google's implementation of H.264 inside Chrome. One is a plugin. One was not. I agree with your comment, and I find the Flash/H.264/Chrome argument to be childish at best.
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  If an Apple or Microsoft blogger finds themselves taking a more hardline stance than the FSF, it's easy to conclude that they're trolling/astroturfing. However if we're talking "childish", then the "Plugins! I thought the point of HTML5 was to avoid plugins" argument wins by a mile. People, including Google, have been pushing HTML5 via various plugins, fallbacks and shims for a good while (e.g. Chrome Frame, Google Gears, Flash Vorbis decode, Java Theora decode etc.)
  - jasonlotito 16y ago
    > However if we're talking "childish", then the "Plugins! I thought the point of HTML5 was to avoid plugins" argument wins by a mile. Which doesn't challenge anything I said. In fact, you can remove plugins from you browser, including Flash, right now.
    - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
      Sorry, I was agreeing with you about Flash and then going off on a tangent without making it clear I was meaning a different "plugin" argument. I was referring to coverage such as: So Much For Standards, Google Says WebM Plugins Coming Soon For Safari And IE9 http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/14/webm-plugins/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/14/webm-plugins/
      - jasonlotito 16y ago
        Now that makes sense. I was reading it completely differently. Which is also why I probably couldn't find anything wrong with what you were saying. Sorry for the confusion. =)
      - GodsMoon 16y ago
        After reading this: http://antimatter15.com/wp/2011/01/the-ambiguity-of-open-and-vp8-vs-h-264/ http://antimatter15.com/wp/2011/01/the-ambiguity-of-open-and... It sounds like the plugins with be in the OS and not the browser. So it will be like downloading a codec for your Mac or PC not like installing Flash on in your browser. The big distinction here is that it will be native to the browser because IE and safari use whatever codecs are in the OS instead of providing their own.
  - contextfree 16y ago
    The hatred for plugins is ridiculous in general. One of the best things about software is that it can be made freely extensible, and browsers are no exception.
- commandar 16y ago
  This can be seen pretty easily on Linux builds of Chrome/Chromium where it links to libflashplayer.so. In fact, when Flash crashes on Linux, Chrome pops up with an infobar telling you that libflashplayer.so has crashed. :)
tomlin 16y ago
> I find it incredibly frustrating that the Grubers of the world have spent months attacking Google for supporting the evil, closed Flash, but then manage to spin Google dropping a closed format in favor of an open one as evil and using it as a roundabout way of continuing to hate on Flash. You just simply cannot deny the audacity of Gruber's comments about WebM/H.264/Flash. They are completely self-serving. I think if Gruber allowed comments on his blog, or had to talk about WebM vs. H.264 in an engagement, he'd have trouble shoving the pro-H.264 side of this debate down people's throats. While he occasionally makes some valid points, Gruber tends to pick and chose which articles to post that'll support his esoteric rhetoric.
- acgourley 16y ago
  I agree Google is being self serving, but I also believe in this case their interests align with the average internet consumer.
  - tomlin 16y ago
    For sure. Google and Apple both play the good for humanity card and both have had some failure and success with aligning their strategies with the people. My only wish is that we identify the difference between tribe-mentality and logical necessity. cookiecaper said it best here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2105570 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2105570
kmfrk 16y ago
I generally like Gruber and think he tends to weigh his thoughts and arguments very well - but I still can't forgive him for buying MPEG LA's PR release[1] hook and sink[2]. Since when has it been a good idea to take a press release at face value[3]? He hasn't recanted this complete acquiescence, so I am under the impression that he sincerely believes them - and only on the grounds of that single release. Maybe he was biased, too cute for his own good, had a brain fart, or is too stubborn to accede. I really don't know, but this is one case where I can't really blame Gruber haters for framing his writing and philosophy in a certain way. [1]: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100825006629/en http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100825006629/en [2]: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/08/26/h264 http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/08/26/h264 [3]: http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/08/27/free-as-in-smokescreen/ http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/08/27/free-as-in-smokescree... (Fixed a typo: "thought" to "thoughts". Don't read anything into it!)
- commandar 16y ago
  Gruber stays in my RSS feed because he can be incredibly insightful at times, but when he decides to go off on one of these insane lines of thought, he really goes for it. The last one I remember was when he spent weeks snarking about how Google was somehow being dishonest about not using private APIs in Android. The reality was Gruber hadn't spent 5 minutes looking at the intro to the Android SDK document, and fundamentally misunderstood how Android is architected. What really made it ridiculous is that he kept on with it after having been corrected on the matter, with one of those corrections coming from no less than Tim Bray. Basically, Gruber is great when he sticks to Apple analysis; when he strays into discussing the competition he tends to enthusiastically dig himself a hole. EDIT: Here's that response from Tim Bray I was referring to: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/05/06/Private-APIs http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/05/06/Private-AP... Gruber was conflating internal datastores with private APIs. The official Android SMS app uses public APIs and then stores messages in its own internal datastore. Bray was cautioning app developers that they shouldn't access that store because the SMS app is not part of the core framework, can be replaced by other applications, and is not guaranteed to be there on all devices as a result. Gruber managed to turn that into constant snarking about Google lying about only using public APIs.
rimantas 16y ago
What's Mozilla's market share on mobile devices?
- commandar 16y ago
  I don't know, but mobile only represents about 3% of web traffic. http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2011/01/2010_mobile_bro.html http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2011/01/2010_mobile_...
  - rimantas 16y ago
    How do you expect this number to change?
    - commandar 16y ago
      With time. The point is that both HTML5 <video> and mobile web are in their infancy. Browser desktop share is now and it seems foolish to ignore 20% of the market in favor of a segment that accounts for 3% of traffic.
      - rimantas 16y ago
        h.264 is also now.
Herring 16y ago
it's really about software patents & about their iThings being unable to play WebM
neild 16y ago
I was discussing this with some people yesterday. I find it incredibly frustrating that the Grubers of the world have spent months attacking Google for supporting the evil, closed Flash, but then manage to spin Google dropping a closed format in favor of an open one as evil and using it as a roundabout way of continuing to hate on Flash. Your argument turns on Gruber hating Flash for being closed. He doesn't: He hates Flash because he thinks it's crap. Gruber is not an open source advocate. He has no objection to open standards, free software, or open source software, but they aren't his passion. You're right that Flash is an entrenched, defacto standard. It is, however, much less of one than it was three years ago, and that's pretty much entirely due to one factor: iOS doesn't support it. The HTML <video> element has traction entirely due to the fact that it's the only way to play video from a web page on an iOS device. You don't have a choice between <video> or Flash: It's <video> or nothing. Chrome dropping H.264 support isn't going to push adoption of the <video> element, because Flash continues to be a perfectly valid alternative method of providing video to Chrome. If Chrome dropped H.264 and Flash, that'd be a different story. Gruber's position is entirely consistent: He supports moves that reduce the usage of Flash, and doesn't support ones that increase it. Google's choice to drop H.264 in Chrome will, in the short term at least, result in the latter. Acknowledging this fact is neither myopic nor fanboyism.
- commandar 16y ago
  >You're right that Flash is an entrenched, defacto standard. It is, however, much less of one than it was three years ago, and that's pretty much entirely due to one factor: iOS doesn't support it. The HTML <video> element has traction entirely due to the fact that it's the only way to play video from a web page on an iOS device. You don't have a choice between <video> or Flash: It's <video> or nothing. So is this debate about what's best for the future of open standards on the web, or is it about what's best for iOS? >short term >myopic S: (adj) short, shortsighted, unforesightful, myopic (lacking foresight or scope) "a short view of the problem"; "shortsighted policies"; "shortsighted critics derided the plan"; "myopic thinking" http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=myopic http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=myopic Sounds like exactly what I meant. It's focusing on short term consequences at the expense of long-term benefit. As I said, dropping H.264 may result in the already entrenched Flash being used more in the near-term; in the long term it could help HTML5 <video> see better overall adoption.
loire280 16y ago
"Further, H.264 was a complete non-starter for Mozilla, and Firefox holds nearly 20% of the market. Using H.264 for HTML5 <video> would have guaranteed market segmentation and hurt the chances of a truly open future" Except Internet Explorer will continue to be the highest-marketshare browser for the foreseeable future, and IE9 won't ship with VP8 (though you can install a codec for it, I doubt regular people will). It does ship with H.264. Maybe Microsoft can be convinced to ship VP8/WebM in IE.
- commandar 16y ago
  >Maybe Microsoft can be convinced to ship VP8/WebM in IE. I certainly wouldn't discount it. MS made the H.264 decision well before Google announced WebM. It wouldn't shock me to see them cut a deal with Google if for no other reason than to put Apple at a competitive disadvantage.
  - tzs 16y ago
    How would it put Apple at a competitive disadvantage? Safari uses Quicktime for video playback. If WebM becomes important, it will be easy for Mac users to get support for it.
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  If you extend last years trend for another 12 months then (according to Statcounters figures) IE, Firefox and Chrome will all have 30% of the market each, with IE heading down, Firefox level, and Chrome going up. Which means, somewhat surprisingly, that IE could be 3rd globally in the relatively near future. In fact the IE drop/Chrome rise appears to be accelerating, so it could happen sooner. http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-200812-201012 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-200812-201012 But that's all versions of IE, IE9 won't be available on XP, and historically it's taken years for new versions to penetrate, so it'll be a much weaker force than Chrome and Firefox which complete updates in a few weeks and months respectively. Microsoft getting on board would be nice, but Adobe getting WebM into Flash would take care of the older versions of IE that are hanging around too.
podperson 16y ago
HTML5 <video> may be in its infancy, but H264 is a huge established technology, and tossing it out will be painful for a lot of people. The best possible outcome of this exercise (and to its credit perhaps this is Google's intention) is for MPEG-LA to make H264 royalty free in perpetuity, which would eliminate the need to switch to WebM. Otherwise we're forced to make a whole bunch of currently useful devices a whole lot less useful in the interest of one day making a (by then) obsolete codec into a universal standard.
nikster 16y ago
Everyone is debating here as if Google's decision to promote WebM was static. That's not the case. This is step 1 in a process that could rid the world of Flash. We need: 1 - Google to publicly put out a strong message (has already happened) 2 - iOS to support WebM (yet to happen) 3 - IE, and others to support WebM. MS has pledged support in IE 9; Safari will follow iOS. Firefox will. 4 - YouTube to gradually switch content from Flash to WebM. Maybe HD content is only going to be available in WebM for starters. Google can do a gradual switch over a course of 5 years or something. So: Yey, Google! Even big evil companies can get it right sometimes. Note also that Google, as the owner of YouTube, can kind of strong-arm everyone into supporting WebM. And by everyone I mean Apple which has a traditionally high resistance to any technology it doesn't control (or at least has a say in).

jasonlotito 16y ago

Google supports Adobe Flash, and has dropped support for Google's implementation of H.264 inside Chrome. One is a plugin. One was not. I agree with your comment, and I find the Flash/H.264/Chrome argument to be childish at best.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago
If an Apple or Microsoft blogger finds themselves taking a more hardline stance than the FSF, it's easy to conclude that they're trolling/astroturfing. However if we're talking "childish", then the "Plugins! I thought the point of HTML5 was to avoid plugins" argument wins by a mile. People, including Google, have been pushing HTML5 via various plugins, fallbacks and shims for a good while (e.g. Chrome Frame, Google Gears, Flash Vorbis decode, Java Theora decode etc.)
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  > However if we're talking "childish", then the "Plugins! I thought the point of HTML5 was to avoid plugins" argument wins by a mile. Which doesn't challenge anything I said. In fact, you can remove plugins from you browser, including Flash, right now.
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    Sorry, I was agreeing with you about Flash and then going off on a tangent without making it clear I was meaning a different "plugin" argument. I was referring to coverage such as: So Much For Standards, Google Says WebM Plugins Coming Soon For Safari And IE9 http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/14/webm-plugins/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/14/webm-plugins/
    - jasonlotito 16y ago
      Now that makes sense. I was reading it completely differently. Which is also why I probably couldn't find anything wrong with what you were saying. Sorry for the confusion. =)
    - GodsMoon 16y ago
      After reading this: http://antimatter15.com/wp/2011/01/the-ambiguity-of-open-and-vp8-vs-h-264/ http://antimatter15.com/wp/2011/01/the-ambiguity-of-open-and... It sounds like the plugins with be in the OS and not the browser. So it will be like downloading a codec for your Mac or PC not like installing Flash on in your browser. The big distinction here is that it will be native to the browser because IE and safari use whatever codecs are in the OS instead of providing their own.
- contextfree 16y ago
  The hatred for plugins is ridiculous in general. One of the best things about software is that it can be made freely extensible, and browsers are no exception.
commandar 16y ago
This can be seen pretty easily on Linux builds of Chrome/Chromium where it links to libflashplayer.so. In fact, when Flash crashes on Linux, Chrome pops up with an infobar telling you that libflashplayer.so has crashed. :)

tomlin 16y ago

> I find it incredibly frustrating that the Grubers of the world have spent months attacking Google for supporting the evil, closed Flash, but then manage to spin Google dropping a closed format in favor of an open one as evil and using it as a roundabout way of continuing to hate on Flash. You just simply cannot deny the audacity of Gruber's comments about WebM/H.264/Flash. They are completely self-serving. I think if Gruber allowed comments on his blog, or had to talk about WebM vs. H.264 in an engagement, he'd have trouble shoving the pro-H.264 side of this debate down people's throats. While he occasionally makes some valid points, Gruber tends to pick and chose which articles to post that'll support his esoteric rhetoric.

acgourley 16y ago
I agree Google is being self serving, but I also believe in this case their interests align with the average internet consumer.
- tomlin 16y ago
  For sure. Google and Apple both play the good for humanity card and both have had some failure and success with aligning their strategies with the people. My only wish is that we identify the difference between tribe-mentality and logical necessity. cookiecaper said it best here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2105570 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2105570

kmfrk 16y ago

I generally like Gruber and think he tends to weigh his thoughts and arguments very well - but I still can't forgive him for buying MPEG LA's PR release[1] hook and sink[2]. Since when has it been a good idea to take a press release at face value[3]? He hasn't recanted this complete acquiescence, so I am under the impression that he sincerely believes them - and only on the grounds of that single release. Maybe he was biased, too cute for his own good, had a brain fart, or is too stubborn to accede. I really don't know, but this is one case where I can't really blame Gruber haters for framing his writing and philosophy in a certain way. [1]: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100825006629/en http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100825006629/en [2]: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/08/26/h264 http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/08/26/h264 [3]: http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/08/27/free-as-in-smokescreen/ http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/08/27/free-as-in-smokescree... (Fixed a typo: "thought" to "thoughts". Don't read anything into it!)

commandar 16y ago
Gruber stays in my RSS feed because he can be incredibly insightful at times, but when he decides to go off on one of these insane lines of thought, he really goes for it. The last one I remember was when he spent weeks snarking about how Google was somehow being dishonest about not using private APIs in Android. The reality was Gruber hadn't spent 5 minutes looking at the intro to the Android SDK document, and fundamentally misunderstood how Android is architected. What really made it ridiculous is that he kept on with it after having been corrected on the matter, with one of those corrections coming from no less than Tim Bray. Basically, Gruber is great when he sticks to Apple analysis; when he strays into discussing the competition he tends to enthusiastically dig himself a hole. EDIT: Here's that response from Tim Bray I was referring to: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/05/06/Private-APIs http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/05/06/Private-AP... Gruber was conflating internal datastores with private APIs. The official Android SMS app uses public APIs and then stores messages in its own internal datastore. Bray was cautioning app developers that they shouldn't access that store because the SMS app is not part of the core framework, can be replaced by other applications, and is not guaranteed to be there on all devices as a result. Gruber managed to turn that into constant snarking about Google lying about only using public APIs.

rimantas 16y ago

What's Mozilla's market share on mobile devices?

commandar 16y ago
I don't know, but mobile only represents about 3% of web traffic. http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2011/01/2010_mobile_bro.html http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2011/01/2010_mobile_...
- rimantas 16y ago
  How do you expect this number to change?
  - commandar 16y ago
    With time. The point is that both HTML5 <video> and mobile web are in their infancy. Browser desktop share is now and it seems foolish to ignore 20% of the market in favor of a segment that accounts for 3% of traffic.
    - rimantas 16y ago
      h.264 is also now.

Herring 16y ago

it's really about software patents & about their iThings being unable to play WebM

neild 16y ago

I was discussing this with some people yesterday. I find it incredibly frustrating that the Grubers of the world have spent months attacking Google for supporting the evil, closed Flash, but then manage to spin Google dropping a closed format in favor of an open one as evil and using it as a roundabout way of continuing to hate on Flash. Your argument turns on Gruber hating Flash for being closed. He doesn't: He hates Flash because he thinks it's crap. Gruber is not an open source advocate. He has no objection to open standards, free software, or open source software, but they aren't his passion. You're right that Flash is an entrenched, defacto standard. It is, however, much less of one than it was three years ago, and that's pretty much entirely due to one factor: iOS doesn't support it. The HTML <video> element has traction entirely due to the fact that it's the only way to play video from a web page on an iOS device. You don't have a choice between <video> or Flash: It's <video> or nothing. Chrome dropping H.264 support isn't going to push adoption of the <video> element, because Flash continues to be a perfectly valid alternative method of providing video to Chrome. If Chrome dropped H.264 and Flash, that'd be a different story. Gruber's position is entirely consistent: He supports moves that reduce the usage of Flash, and doesn't support ones that increase it. Google's choice to drop H.264 in Chrome will, in the short term at least, result in the latter. Acknowledging this fact is neither myopic nor fanboyism.

commandar 16y ago
>You're right that Flash is an entrenched, defacto standard. It is, however, much less of one than it was three years ago, and that's pretty much entirely due to one factor: iOS doesn't support it. The HTML <video> element has traction entirely due to the fact that it's the only way to play video from a web page on an iOS device. You don't have a choice between <video> or Flash: It's <video> or nothing. So is this debate about what's best for the future of open standards on the web, or is it about what's best for iOS? >short term >myopic S: (adj) short, shortsighted, unforesightful, myopic (lacking foresight or scope) "a short view of the problem"; "shortsighted policies"; "shortsighted critics derided the plan"; "myopic thinking" http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=myopic http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=myopic Sounds like exactly what I meant. It's focusing on short term consequences at the expense of long-term benefit. As I said, dropping H.264 may result in the already entrenched Flash being used more in the near-term; in the long term it could help HTML5 <video> see better overall adoption.

loire280 16y ago

"Further, H.264 was a complete non-starter for Mozilla, and Firefox holds nearly 20% of the market. Using H.264 for HTML5 <video> would have guaranteed market segmentation and hurt the chances of a truly open future" Except Internet Explorer will continue to be the highest-marketshare browser for the foreseeable future, and IE9 won't ship with VP8 (though you can install a codec for it, I doubt regular people will). It does ship with H.264. Maybe Microsoft can be convinced to ship VP8/WebM in IE.

commandar 16y ago
>Maybe Microsoft can be convinced to ship VP8/WebM in IE. I certainly wouldn't discount it. MS made the H.264 decision well before Google announced WebM. It wouldn't shock me to see them cut a deal with Google if for no other reason than to put Apple at a competitive disadvantage.
- tzs 16y ago
  How would it put Apple at a competitive disadvantage? Safari uses Quicktime for video playback. If WebM becomes important, it will be easy for Mac users to get support for it.
ZeroGravitas 16y ago
If you extend last years trend for another 12 months then (according to Statcounters figures) IE, Firefox and Chrome will all have 30% of the market each, with IE heading down, Firefox level, and Chrome going up. Which means, somewhat surprisingly, that IE could be 3rd globally in the relatively near future. In fact the IE drop/Chrome rise appears to be accelerating, so it could happen sooner. http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-200812-201012 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-200812-201012 But that's all versions of IE, IE9 won't be available on XP, and historically it's taken years for new versions to penetrate, so it'll be a much weaker force than Chrome and Firefox which complete updates in a few weeks and months respectively. Microsoft getting on board would be nice, but Adobe getting WebM into Flash would take care of the older versions of IE that are hanging around too.

podperson 16y ago

HTML5 <video> may be in its infancy, but H264 is a huge established technology, and tossing it out will be painful for a lot of people. The best possible outcome of this exercise (and to its credit perhaps this is Google's intention) is for MPEG-LA to make H264 royalty free in perpetuity, which would eliminate the need to switch to WebM. Otherwise we're forced to make a whole bunch of currently useful devices a whole lot less useful in the interest of one day making a (by then) obsolete codec into a universal standard.

nikster 16y ago

Everyone is debating here as if Google's decision to promote WebM was static. That's not the case. This is step 1 in a process that could rid the world of Flash. We need: 1 - Google to publicly put out a strong message (has already happened) 2 - iOS to support WebM (yet to happen) 3 - IE, and others to support WebM. MS has pledged support in IE 9; Safari will follow iOS. Firefox will. 4 - YouTube to gradually switch content from Flash to WebM. Maybe HD content is only going to be available in WebM for starters. Google can do a gradual switch over a course of 5 years or something. So: Yey, Google! Even big evil companies can get it right sometimes. Note also that Google, as the owner of YouTube, can kind of strong-arm everyone into supporting WebM. And by everyone I mean Apple which has a traditionally high resistance to any technology it doesn't control (or at least has a say in).