Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

Re:Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome by buster on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @03:31AM (#2095456)

Afaik, HTML5 is not finished yet. They could still settle for a codec, i guess? Will this happen? Not with all the money that is to be made out of license fees in the future. But nevertheless, it's the right move to drop support for H.264, imo. No single part of the internet as we know it should be "owned" by a few companies (see the very good comment about the GIF format at http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=2094591 ).

Why are so many against the proprietary Flash format but embrace the H.264 codec? Google even invested 133 million dollar to buy On2 and offer the world an alternative.

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Re:Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome by scottbruin on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @04:58AM (#2095587)

I'm not for or against either—that's why I wanted to step back and make sure we're talking about this in terms of the history of the issue. Sure, I have my preference for how I'd like to see things pan out as a developer who just managed a 6 month project deploying video to a large client base.

> Why are so many against the proprietary Flash format but embrace the H.264 codec?

This is the wrong question to me. A more apt comparison is to JPEG or GIF. Considering the work I just did, it's like comparing JPEG to Bitmap—of course I like JPEG better, and its licensing issues have been transparent to me as a developer and end-user.

As a developer, I dislike Flash because:

1. it's slow on my computer

2. it requires another language for client-side development,

3. it breaks how the web "works" (open in new window, back button, etc.)

4. it costs me a developer money as opposed to the browser vendor

If you look at the above list, the web going the way of H.264 has none of these problems. Personally, I'd like a single video format but wish that WebM had come along two years ago instead of causing another transition in video formats.

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