RSSFuture of open Web video may change with Google acquisition of On2
By Tim Conneally | Published August 5, 2009, 10:05 AM
Google announced today that it will be acquiring video compression company On2 Technologies for an estimated $106.5 million, pending stockholder approval and regulatory consent.
"Today video is an essential part of the Web experience, and we believe high-quality video compression technology should be a part of the Web platform," Sundar Pichai, Google's vice president for product management, said this morning. "We are committed to innovation in video quality on the Web, and we believe that On2's team and technology will help us further that goal."
The Ogg Theora video codec is based upon On2's patented VP3 codec, which the company open-sourced in 2001 and turned over to Xiph.org in 2002. The first stable version of the codec was only released last year but was included in draft versions of HTML 5. Theora was originally used in HTML 5 for its embedded <VIDEO> element, but its selection was recently suspended in favor of format agnosticism.
"I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that there is no suitable codec that all vendors are willing to implement and ship," HTML 5 author Ian Hickson wrote last month. "I have therefore removed the two subsections in the HTML 5 spec in which codecs would have been required, and have instead left the matter undefined."
However, the Theora <VIDEO> tag has received support from Mozilla in Firefox 3.5, and also by video site DailyMotion, The Internet Archive (Archive.org), and Wikipedia.
If enough weight is thrown behind Ogg Theora, it could become the Web's de facto open video platform, abolishing the need for proprietary plug-ins like Apple's QuickTime or Adobe's Flash. Google -- which arguably owns Web video with YouTube -- could seriously change the progress of HTML 5 and the evolution of open video, if it decides to throw its weight behind Theora.
Betanews has sent inquiries to Google today to see what their plans are for On2's technology, and we'll update you when we receive a response.
Good news. H.264 and WMV need some competition.
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|VP3 ? VP6 ? VP8
but Hickson = Google employee
If they're smart they open up VP8 and integrate it in Android and Chrome. VP8 claims to be superior to H.264 (I haven't found any independent test).
Forget Theora, it's not even on a par with ASP. Same goes for VP6. There's a reason everybody has abandoned the old VP6-based FLV format since Flash started supporting H.264.
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|I don't think the point of it all is VP3.
What Google will get there is mainly VP6 and VP8. Which means, if what the community speculates reveals true, that the associated technology and patents could be made available royalty-free, and maybe even open-source, with a clean intellectual property situation.
Therefore, we might then get the awaited "suitable codec that all vendors are willing to implement and ship" as VP8 which is supposedly superior to H.264.
On a related point, Adobe also licenses On2 VP6, which would make that company depend on Google for their Media Servers product range, as well as Flash itself.
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|Good news, indeed!
Hopefully this will take Google out of the h.264 camp and place them firmly in the Theora camp regarding HTML5. They can optimize, improve performance on, and lower the bandwidth requirements and have the bank to protect the codec from the lawsuits of patent-trolls.
Now let's just hope they don't do something stupid like shelve it.
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|I doubt it; Apple was the only vendor who seemed to have patent issues with Theora, but they weren't even related to On2 (who had already disclaimed all rights and patents, in addition to releasing the source code). Google's acquisition of this shouldn't change that.
What I think is far more likely to happen (or at least what I *hope*) is that Google opens some of the newer formats, like VP8, that could (supposedly) better compete with H.264.
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|I don't see why people thought there were patent issues before: On2 has open-sourced the codec AND disclaimed all patents. The only possible issue would be if On2 accidentally stepped on someone else's "toes"/patents without realizing it and if that holder decided to act--but that its highly unlikely. Google's acquistion of On2 should really have *no consquence*, since if there are any patent issues, they are certainly not related to On2, which has little to do with Theora at this point.
I don't think this story is as exciting as it sounds.
Or, we could pretend it means Google wants to use Theora and that this somehow makes it possible when it apparently wasn't before.
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|Ogg is never going to be the standard. All the movie companies already use h264 on Blu-Ray's anyways. The analogy I would use is Windows and Linux. Windows is propitiatory like h264 and Ogg is open source and free like Linux. With Windows 7 and OSX already supporting h264 out of the box I don't see why it can't be the standard.
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|"With Windows 7 and OSX already supporting h264 out of the box I don't see why it can't be the standard."
Because in order to use it, you must pay licensing fees.
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|Linux is supporting ogg.
Vlc media player and many other media players, can play it.
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|I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple drop their pointless pushing of h264 for the video tag now that this has happened.
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|Apple has patents on h264 and hides it's name behind MPEG LA.
Any service will have to pay licencing fees beginning 2010-2012 I heard.
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|Including online services e.g. youtube.
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|Google's business depends on open / standards based technology. It is definitely in Google's best interests to see Ogg Theora improve and be freely available.
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|Only after they acquired the company and codec. They wanted nothing to do with it until they bought it. Now we see if they embrace it or kill it off.
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|So you are saying they bought it to kill it off? I think you have Google confused with Microsoft
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|Hello.
No, I'm not greeting you. It the title of a piece of software Google bought...and killed off. :)
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|The game is on. I was expecting for a move from Google. And this is it. This will seriously put the fear into Microsoft, Apple and other such companies. There is no reason what so ever for Google to invest in On2 other than having the means to shape the future of video on the web.
Do not forget this. Video is about to become a major part of the web. Internet TV is expanding rapidly, but most important video is one of the best means to deliver applications in a platform agnostic way. Any device with a browser that supports web standards will be able to stream video content and thus any cloud based service that uses video to stream applications to your device will be supported.
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