Fun Stuff > CLIKC
Google dropping h.264 support from Chrome
IrrationalPie:
Just found an opinion from Opera's creator.
I think this would better explain the argument : http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2011/01/13/openness
est:
Yeah I've already read that a couple of days ago, and I know what the argument is. I still disagree with it.
--- Quote ---9. "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.
--- End quote ---
He suggests this is a good thing? "Oh, lucky Google has that advertising monopoly to make everyone else do what they want."
Honestly though, advertising monopoly or not I cannot see how Google is going to convince people to use Chrome when they are doing shit like this. Pretty much every user comment on both their Chromium blog entries on this topic is negative, and that is on their blog, so I would assume the commenters are actually Chrome fans. They are getting a shellacing for it from a lot of major tech news sites and web design sites. The only people who seem to be in their corner at the moment are FSF-type guys, which is not really a positive thing.
--- Quote ---8. "Firefox users would be able to view H.264 content using Microsoft's plugin"
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
--- End quote ---
He's being hypocritical here, because this is exactly what Google is suggesting to do for IE9 & Safari users - create a WebM plugin. He criticises the use of plugins, yet lauds Google retaining Flash plugin as pragmatic, and calls it a red herring when it's actually a really, really big part of the conversation. Why are they leaving Flash plugin support in? He suggests it's because they are being pragmatic, but if they wanted to be pragmatic why not just leave things as they were and keep supporting both WebM and h.264, as they have been? That would have been the pragmatic option.
Here is another interesting couple of facts:
1. In this Engadget review of the GoogleTV device Google reps told them that even though the GoogleTV can handle HTML5 video playback they force users to the Flash-based versions of files because then they can serve ads.
--- Quote ---Google's own YouTube -- one of the first sites to provide HTML5 video playback -- loads up its Flash player on Google TV, because that's the only way Google can serve ads during the content. Seriously -- that's what Google told us.
--- End quote ---
2. Google makes money from advertising. It is a tech company, sure. But its money comes from advertising. Check this table of incomes out: http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html
If it's not immediately obvious to you, here is a simplified table:
So they can only serve Youtube ads using Flash, and they make all their money from ads. Hey, I wonder why they like Flash so much?
--- Quote ---Just because a format is widespread offline does not mean that it is suitable for use on the web. Since the web requires open standards, H.264 is not suitable as the primary format for video on the web, by definition.
--- End quote ---
Is he being serious? By his definition gifs should never have been suitable for the web, but at one time they were one of the main image types used everywhere. The main reason they're being superceded by PNGs is because PNGs give better quality images. The web is not something unique, it is another media transmission medium. A lot of people already have their media encoded in h.264 for use elsewhere, the path of least resistance means that they'll prefer to keep it that way instead of re-encoding everything in WebM just for the web. I can shoot h.264 video on a number of devices I already own, and watch it on any number of other devices I already own. I know that (as he says) I upload it to youtube it'll re-encode it for me, but youtube isn't the only game in town, nor should they expect the website to do all the work converting things over to the magical web-suitable WebM format.
est:
As an aside, Google has become a really really strange beast. I've watched it grow over the years, starting from back when it was this great new search engine competitor to Altavista and Yahoo. On the one hand you've got the Google who champions free software & web standards and gives us a bunch of really great products like their search engine, GMail, Google Maps, Reader, Chrome, Android, and I guess if you want to count it as one of theirs, Youtube.
On the other hand you've got this absolute behemoth with a virtual monopoly on search and internet advertising, who has bought out a whole plethora of other companies and now its fingers in so many tech pies that they are competing with just about every other company in the tech world. A company that collects every single piece of information it can from its users, including (as it's coming to light) illegal wifi searches in multiple countries while taking the photos for the really cool but already kind of creepy Street View, and then uses that information to target ads at you, for which it gets paid.
It has gone from this really cool, funky tech company into a hulking hydra where not all of its faces are entirely benevolent. I used to laugh at people who'd say that they don't trust Google, because c'mon man, it's Google! Google search! Google mail! Google maps! C'mon! But now I don't know. Its attitude toward privacy is really starting to bug me, and seeing that they make most of their money from knowing as much about us as they possible can, I'm not sure that my discomfort is unjustified.
est:
So I guess you can use that info to colour why I am skeptical about their intentions? I dunno.
est:
Ok ok, last one for a while:
Given what I have said above, and that Google has gone on the record as saying that Flash is the present of video on the web and WebM is its future, it wouldn't surprise me (if fact I fully expect) that there is a Google dev team looking into a way to modify the WebM format to allow for easy, on-the-fly insertion of other videos into the middle of existing videos so that they can serve dynamic ads in native html5 video. It also wouldn't surprise me if this was kept separate from the normal WebM spec and sold as a pro-only feature for commercial use, like they do with Google Earth Pro.
If so, their gameplan would look something like:
1. convince everyone to move to WebM, as it is a "free, open" codec
2. patent a way to slipstream ads into WebM content on the fly that is compatible with the free codec, sell it to web media providers who are stuck using the now-standard WebM
3. $$$
bonus points for evil/web advertising monopoly would come in if the ads could only be served from Google's own ad network.
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