> and ultimately this will be to increase the quality of YouTube while minimizing their licensing costs. Yes, I can also imagine they have specific requirement

> and ultimately this will be to increase the quality of YouTube while minimizing their licensing costs. Yes, I can also imagine they have specific requirements on the file format like quickly skipping to timestamps, highly variable bitrate, handling text and graphics well etc. I imagine their requirements to be so general that it'll benefit anyone, especially those that do streaming. In either case "just one more standard" (or relevant xkcd) is an unavoidable obstacle for every new standard, and does not mean the project will fail. I have lots of critique against Google but this is one thing they are positioned to do well, and have a decent track record. And given how the competition operates, is frankly refreshing.