Chrome dropping h.264 support
Out of context: Reply #20
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- abettertomorrow0
Boz, you make one good point and another I completely disagree with.
It is true that h.264 has kept the door open to some kind of licensing fee after 2016. And to be honest, that is what I would say this is REALLY about. Not open source - Google has shown itself to be more than willing to accept non-open solutions (like Flash) where practical. Nope, this is really just about good old fashioned money:)
It's doubtful that the MPEG-LA organization is going to try to charge every small business out there fees. It would be incredibly time-consuming, and probably not cost-productive for them to do so for every user running video on a site with a few ads. My feeling is these charges will really only come into play for huge sites like YouTube - and there, Google does have a legitimate concern.
Now, when you say video is the major thing about HTML5 I almost spit out my coffee...after all the ink we've wasted on this issue, how can you really say that? The video tag is just one tiny part of HTML5, and not even the most consequential IMO. I don't think this move by Google comes anything close to "killing" HTML5 video, and I'm even skeptical it will help Web M all that much. As Gruber says, it will most likely result in:
HTML5 video for everyone else w/ h.264 > Flash fallback for Chrome and older devices w/ h.264
Congratulations, Google