Oh wow. Google’s dropping support for h.264 video in Chrome, because, they say, they’re only going to support ” open codec technologies” :
To that end, we are changing Chrome’s HTML5 support to make it in line with the codecs already supported by the open Chromium project. Specifically, we are supporting the WebM (VP8) and Theora video codecs , and may consider adding support for other high-quality open codecs at some point. Though H.264 plays a very important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will likely be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies.
Instead, Google’s going to push its own WebM video , based on the VP8 standard and Theora. The issue is that there’s not a ton of support for WebM yet, above all on the subject of hardware decoders and in relation to mobile. H.264 also already has a ton of momentum, largely because of the mobile space . But this may definitely help WebM get some pick up.
In other words, the video standards battle is back on. And expect to still see a whole bunch Adobe Flash outside of Google’s YouTube to play video when you’re using Chrome. Speaking of! How come Adobe Flash-a really closed-source technology-will still be baked into Chrome? [ Google ]
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