The Future of Internet Video

If you're not a user of an iOS device - iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch - you may not be fully aware of the battle that is currently being waged over the future of Internet Video. A year ago, the "state of the art" was based on Adobe's Flash player. But with the rise of the iOS juggernaut and Steve Jobs's refusal to allow Flash on his mobile devices, HTML5 is on the rise. HTML5 includes a new "video" tag in the base specification, so Flash is no longer needed, but now the debate has shifted to which Codec (i.e. the way video is encoded into a file and transported across the internet) will be the future. The two top contenders for the moment are WebM/VP8 - a standard owned by Google and being pushed as royalty-free - and H.264 which is used today for YouTube, iTunes, and most hardware-based encoders.

Up until now, the primary argument against H.264 has been the number of patents involved, and the high licensing fees for people who want to include H.264 in their devices/software which would be prohibitive for Free Software/Open Source groups.

The newest move in this battle was an announcement yesterday from MPEGLA that H.264 would remain royalty-free "forever" for websites and customers to use. This was taken by some to cut the feet out from under WebM/VP8 proponents. But today, Mozilla reminded everyone that this does not mean it is free to software or hardware makers. And until it is, Free Software and Open Source browsers like Firefox may be unable to support it.

This is required reading for anyone interested in the future of TV and movies on the web.

Proof that in I/T "No" Always Means "Yes"

For years, there have been rumors of a GoogleOS and a Google Web Browser. For years, Google has exhaustively denied the rumors, claiming that they had NO desire to compete with Mozilla, Apple, and Microsoft in the browser space. But, just as Apple's denial of the existence an iPhone turned into confirmation of the iPhone, Google's denials have become confirmation of a new Google-originated browser called Google Chrome. Imaginatively, Google released the announcement as a webcomic.

Perhaps most interesting is Google's choice to use Webkit - the same underpinnings as Apple's Safari - as the basis of Chrome. Why is this interesting? Because Google spends millions of dollars a year supporting the Mozilla Foundation. This choice means that Mozilla has been unable to find a user for their Mozilla rendering engine, even among their own biggest fans.