Google Open Sources VP8 and it's Going Into Flash - Take That, H.264!

The first big announcement at Google I/O today was a game-changer for HTML5 web video.  As many predicted, Google announced the open sourcing of On2's VP8 video codec.  Unlike H.264, which is patent encumbered, or Ogg Theora, which might have a patent pool being assembled against it, VP8 is now fully open and completely royalty-free.  Just minutes later, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch announced that his company would use VP8 in Flash.

Before today, On2, which was acquired by Google, had over 2 billion VP8 installs recorded.  Google found that the codec was a great piece of technology that was optimized for the web, efficient with bandwidth, and a best-in-class coder for real-time streaming video.  Google didn't forget about audio codecs either.  The Ogg Vorbis audio codec will join VP8 in the WebM initiative.  You can find a WebM developer preview now at webmproject.org.

For years, the battle over HTML5's video codec has raged on.  Although H.264 is an excellent codec and royalty-free until 2016 for non-commercial video, it's patented - and that doesn't sit well with the "open" web philosophy.  Ogg Theora on the other hand, is not patent encumbered (so far), but its quality is inferior.  By the grace of Google, we now have a third player in this arena (with performance potentially on par with H.264) that adheres to the open web ideology and is well-positioned for rapid growth.

Read more: DZone

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