Comments on: Google: Decision Over Video Format Is All About The Patents

By: Benjamin

Benjamin — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 23:59:20 +0000

“With the world divided about 65-35 between Safari and Internet Explorer users in the majority and Firefox, Opera and Chrome users on the minority,…”

Check your Stats… Chrome, Opera and Firefox are the Majority: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Internet Explorer Firefox Chrome Safari Opera
27.5 % 43.5% 22.4% 3.8% 2.2%

This also means, Flash is indespensable. Maybe a good thing after all. Flash always gives an idea of what HTML could be (in the future), and It’ll always be like that.

By: Steve Ardire

Steve Ardire — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 23:05:07 +0000

OK article but this one is much deeper and better

Google’s dropping H.264 from Chrome a step backward for openness
http://bit.ly/hGForW

By: Wilhelm Reuch

Wilhelm Reuch — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 13:11:44 +0000

The problem is that Google doesnt promise their proprietary WebM video format (it is not an open standard – only free) is free from patent problems. And video-codecs are never patent free. This is no problem for, say, Mozilla as nobody is going to sue anyone that dosnt have any money. But companies like Apple or Microsoft are big targets for patent trolls. If Google were sure WebM had no patent problems they would promise to handle any such problems – but they do not make any such promises. Thus WebM is all about control. Googles control. They want video codecs and software that can be tailored to contribute to their business (which is selling ads).