> Because they forced it

No, browsers and hardware manufacturers have implemented VP9 because it has better licensing terms than H.264 and especially better than HEVC. HEVC was released at around the same time as VP9 and yet today VP9 has double the installed base of HEVC: https://ngcodec.com/news/2017/10/21/why-we-are-supporting-vp...

> In this case, Apple went with the industry standard.

No. When it comes to the web the industry standard is royalty-free formats and protocols: https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20170801/

Video formats which require a patent licensing fee (like H.264 and HEVC) have been an anomaly.

> Why shouldn’t Google just fix their site?

Because VP9 outperforms H.264: https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/more-efficient-mobile-en...

VP9 just works better: https://youtube-eng.googleblog.com/2015/04/vp9-faster-better...

Applenuses the same codec everywhere. They needed H264 support for other things (like video foot recorded from iPhones, or physical cameras). They also support it in Safari.

This isn’t like Mozilla, who only makes a web browser.

I really don't know what you're trying to argue. We're talking about web video here. There's nothing stopping Apple from adding VP9 support. VP9 outperforms H.264 and the other major browsers have added support for it.

Apple will be adding support for AV1. Like VP9, AV1 is royalty-free. The Alliance for Open Media has been so effective (even before AV1's release) and HEVC's licensing has been so terrible that MPEG is starting to question whether it can survive as an organization:

http://blog.chiariglione.org/a-crisis-the-causes-and-a-solut...

Royalty-free video formats are simply a better way to go.

I suspect what’s going on is that they’ve already invested software and hardware time in HEVC and instead of making a corresponding investment in a codec with similar performance they’re focusing that effort on the next generation with better performance. I suspect that if the full story of VP9 performance & HEVC licensing had been known at the time they’d have made a different call; HEVC got a lot more expensive late in the game when a lot of early plans had been set into motion.

Apple went with H264 for the original iPhone in 2007.

WebM was released in 2010. VP9 is from ‘12/‘13.

H264 was already the web video standard when WebM/VP9 came along.

I take issue with Google trying to force everyone over to their format and removing support for higher resolution H264. They crippled what used to work for me to push their agenda. And because it’s license free I’m supposed to be good with it.

This is exactly the kind of stuff people used to get pissed at MS or Apple for.

But it’s Google, and people love Chrome. So this is good and Apple is the one not going with the ‘standard’ that ‘everyone else’ is using.

Minor correction: they started with VP8 and a PR campaign trying to spin it as better than H.264 but it took VP9 to actually deliver better results than H.264. Both VP9 and H.265 offer big improvements but with a corresponding jump in processor requirements.

And, yes, it was not Google's finest hour, especially when they strung Mozilla promising to disable H.264 in Chrome but never actually shipping it (remember https://brendaneich.com/2012/03/video-mobile-and-the-open-we...).