Microsoft likens Google's H.264 drop to abandoning English

updated 11:35 am EST, Wed January 12, 2011

Microsoft jabs Google dropping H264 in Chrome

Microsoft Client Platform team member Tim Sneath jabbed Google for its decision to drop H.264 support in HTML5 for Chrome in favor of WebM. He compared it to a country deciding to drop English as a language in favor of artificial languages like Esperanto and Klingon. The remarks pointed out the irony of claiming to promote openness and choice by artificially removing the most practical, popular option.

"Though English plays an important role in speech today, as our goal is to enable open innovation, its further use as a form of communication in this country will be prohibited and our resources directed towards languages that are untainted by real-world usage," he joked.

He also underscored the gap between actual usage and Google's claims that WebM was well adopted, pointing out that Esperanto had broad use by "as many as 10,000 speakers."

The criticism echoes that of many commenters following Google's abrupt change in policy. Most mainstream accessible HD video both online and off today is encoded in H.264 and would need to be either transcoded or put into a Flash container to be viewable in Chrome. Some developers and video editors have said they plan to abandon Chrome as an explicit target since they would have to support at least two and possibly three video implementations to get Chrome to work.

Third-party plugins may work around the flaw, but critics have noted that Google so far hasn't been consistent in dropping proprietary formats and still has fully integrated Flash. The company has commercial motives to keep Flash in spite of its principles, as YouTube is still only guaranteed to work for all videos in Flash and Google has a formal agreement with Adobe to promote Flash in its software.

Apple and Microsoft currently support H.264 in HTML5 and, as the defaults browser providers for their respective platforms, are likely to keep H.264 in majority use. Mozilla's Firefox and Opera's self-titled browser currently only support open formats like WebM and Ogg Theora, but both currently have flat market share where only Chrome and Safari have been seeing measurable gains.

By Electronista Staff

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industry, software, Microsoft, Google, Firefox, mozilla, Opera, Internet Explorer, Apple, Chrome, WebM

aussiearn

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jan 2011

+53

01/12, 12:17pm | report spam | close reply

I totally agree with Microsoft

To my surprise I totally agree with Microsoft on this one-I feel kind of dirty though!

kerryb

Joined: Aug 2001

+16

01/12, 12:41pm | report spam | close reply

the lines are being drawn...

for the next big technology showdown and it is a big one. The browser is by far the most important app on any computer or mobile device. Making money pushing one "open" technology versus another slightly more "open" one is nothing new. What is new is the partners, Apple + Microsoft vs Adobe + Google. This is going to be fun to watch but let's hope it is not the consumer that pays the price jumping through hoops to watch a cute cat on youtube.

Comment buried. Show

Sabon

Joined: Mar 2005

-12

01/12, 12:42pm | report spam | (2 replies) close | reply

Did you know that MS is one of the patent holders.

Did you know that MS is one of the patent holders for H.264? No?

It's true. They, as well as Apple, are two of the biggest stock holders of the company that holds the patents for H.264.

I'm not picking sides as to which is preferred BUT it is important to make things VERY clear about why Microsoft might appose them dropping H.264.

Right now the company (not MS but the company they own stock in) says they will never charge download fees for free content, meaning if you don't charge for the content then won't put a download fee on it. You DO have to buy a license to create the content though.

Now WebM. Google owns the patents for WebM so that is their side of the story. They do not charge any fees for creating content with WebM nor for any downloads of said content even if you charge for said content.

Any company can license the standard for free. There is no charge at all. They just needs to sign a license agreement that you will follow the rules.

Keep in mind that Google can do this because you do pay for everything in one way or another. In Google's case it is like commercial radio where you pay for the receiver but not for the programming. Instead the programming is paid for by commercials, hence the name "commercial radio" as compared to "free radio". The substance is only there to fill in the gaps between commercials and give you a reason to tune in.

facebook_Chris

Via Facebook

+10

01/12, 01:48pm | report spam | close reply

Google is trying to get everyone's information

If they can force you to use their VP8 tech... they can push advertising on you based on what you've watched in the past either through their integration of flash or through their VP8 tech. They can not track what people are watching and target ads to them.

facebook_Stephane

-31

01/12, 02:06pm | report spam | (1 reply) close | reply

s**** you Appple and Microsoft with it!

Flash proprietary? Really? Some people listen to Apple's gospel a bit too much and after all, Apple started that war so why is Apple's ally upset that Google defends its friend? We developers love Google and Adobe, we only pulled with Apple's bullshit because we did not have a choice. Now, it's showdown and payback time!

The core engine of Flash Player (AVM+) is open source and was donated to the Mozilla Foundation, where it is actively maintained. The file formats supported by Flash Player, SWF and FLV/F4V, as well as the RTMP and AMF protocols are freely available and openly published. Anyone can use the specifications without requiring permission from Adobe. Third parties can and do build audio, video, and data services that compete with those from Adobe.

There are no restrictions on the development of SWF authoring tools, and anyone can build their own SWF or FLV/F4V player.

Flex, the primary application framework for the Adobe Flash Platform, is also open source and is actively maintained and developed by Adobe and the community.

Finally, the Flash Platform has a rich developer ecosystem of both open and proprietary tools and technologies, including developer IDEs and environments such as FDT, IntelliJ, and haXe; open source runtimes such as Gnash; and open source video servers such as Red5.

http://applesucks.squarespace.com/

mankso

-1

01/12, 02:44pm | report spam | close reply

Esperanto

Corrections:

- Klingon is an artificial language, Esperanto is not - it is a synthesis based on
already existing ethnic languages, not something conjured up out of thin air.
'Planned' or 'constructed' would be more appropriate terms to describe Esperanto.

- And as far as Esperanto having "as many as 10,000 speakers", present internet use and attendance at annual world congresses would seem to indicate that this number is far too low.
According to the the Esperantic Studies Foundation site: "The Universal Esperanto Association, with membership drawn from the most active parts of the Esperanto community, has national affiliates in 70 countries and individual members in many more. Estimates based on textbooks sold and membership of local Esperanto societies put the number of people with knowledge of the language in the hundreds of thousands and possibly millions. There are Esperanto speakers in all parts of the world, including notable concentrations in countries as diverse as China, Japan, Brazil, Iran, Lithuania and Cuba."

- Some reasons why one might consider preferring Esperanto over English as a more egalitarian and less discriminatory means of inter-ethnic communication can be found in the multilingual Prague Manifesto:
http://lingvo.org

testudo

Forum Regular

-27

01/12, 02:49pm | report spam | (1 reply) close | reply

Stupid

but critics have noted that Google so far hasn't been consistent in dropping proprietary formats and still has fully integrated Flash.

Yes, they could be like Apple, just force people to not be able to use proprietary formats they don't want you to use so you have to use the proprietary formats they want you to use.

Flash is 'proprietary', but it is also so mainstream and prevalent that to drop the support or not work to make it easier/better for the user is just treating your users to a crappy end-product.

pairof9s

Joined: Jan 2008

01/12, 03:49pm | report spam | close reply

Whatever...

To argue Flash is popular and thus justified to rule makes about as much sense as saying CD should be purchased instead of MP3s for music.

If Adobe had been a good steward of this software's development and kept it moving with the times, then I think people, and Apple in particular, would not be hammering it for its deficiencies. Perhaps Adobe will get this software working well on mobile devices soon, but in the meantime, there's no need to banish H.264/HTML 5 because it's providing an alternative...now!

It's ridiculous what some people will post here just to make their anti-Apple sentiments known.

/

Makosuke

01/12, 03:57pm | report spam | close reply

EGAD!

I actually agree with a Microsoft evangelist, and one touting the IE platform on top of it. What is the world coming to?

This doesn't mean that I don't still hate IE with a deep-seated, burning passion on a level that will never be soothed, no matter how many standards it supports, but MS is right on this one, and Google is flat-out wrong.

I don't care what you do or don't think about Apple and Adobe, h.264 has hardware decoding support, Web.M DOES NOT. End of story. NOTHING will overcome that deficiency on mobile devices unless and until companies start building Web.M decoders into hardware, which could take years if it ever happens at all.

h.264 is also a far more mature, and arguably superior, codec when it comes to quality vs. bandwidth, but I'll just ignore that argument.

Removing h.264 from the HTML5 component of Chrome has done one of two things: Held back the advancement of a non-Flash video standard for the web, or put Chrome in the same box as Firefox as a second-class HTML5 video citizen.

The painful irony for Chrome--which I now can no longer recommend whole-heartedly as a browser to people, even though I want to--is that this isn't going to do ANYTHING to reduce its reliance on h.264. It's just going to shift h.264 decoding from an internal HTML5 rendering component to Chrome's embedded Flash component.

Explain to me how that's a good thing?

WaltFrench

Joined: Jun 2003

01/12, 05:16pm | report spam | close reply

Short Memories On Display Here

The primary reason that Flash is not on mobile devices is that Adobe has failed to put it out.

Nokia invented the smartphone over ten years ago and there is not one of them that runs full Flash. Ditto for BlackBerrys, Windows Mobile and WinCE and WinPhone7, Palms, a host of other OS's and *even* a majority of Androids in use.

Most smartphones STILL don't have the resources to run Flash. It likes 1GHz CPUs, plenty of RAM. And a lot of love from Adobe: whatever you want to say about "core" functionality being public, it's still Copyright (C) Adobe Inc.

You still see news such as Adobe recalling Flash for the Tegra for performance reasons. Flash is a complex product and since it is nowhere close to public domain, and licensing issues are ambiguous at best, I'm not aware of a single hardware implementation. (Yes, I have seen that Real Soon Now, Flash 10.2 will make even better use of whatever graphics talents a device does have.)

On the other hand, h.264 is widely implemented in hardware, is stable and can be extended in software for new advances. Licensing is relatively inexpensive for mass implementers such as smartphone OEMs and it runs very well in a power- and memory-constrained device.

So the primary reason Flash is not on phones: Adobe HAD figured out that all they had to do was to support Windows quite well and Mac halfway well, but HASN'T figured out how a business plan to cover the cost of hundreds of combinations of CPU, GPU, memory, screen, OS, etc. It's free to users but not available at any price in today's hottest product category.

And the primary reason h.264 is not on phones? None. But watch out: it WILL be that way if (1) one man (Rubin), one company called Google, gets enough market share to put their stranglehold on the mobile internet, and (2) Android OEMs don't go the extra mile of replacing Chrome with a more standards-compliant browser, perhaps because there is exactly zero guarantee that future Androids releases are restricted to OEMs who agree to feature Google services and browsers.

There IS one great reason for doing this: if websites don't use h.264 to encode videos, why then Apple has to reverse course and put Flash into iOS. It's a GREAT competitive advantage to put FUD out in front of iPhone buyers, to try to switch them to Android, on which Google makes more money.

B9bot

Joined: Dec 2008

01/12, 05:29pm | report spam | close reply

For once I agree with Microsoft, Dumb decision Goo

For once I agree with Microsoft, dumb decision Google! Probably the dumbest I have ever heard!
If that was an anti-Apple move, I'm pretty sure it's going to backfire on Google really badly.
I'm sure Apple is laughing at that decision!

01/12, 05:43pm | report spam | close reply

A Trip Down Memory Lane

If you're also an old-timer, you remember the various fights over which cellphone standard would be used. (The US ended up with a mix of several, meaning spotty coverage because you can be right underneath a T-Mobile tower and your Sprint phone doesn't understand it at all. The richest nation in the world doesn't have enough money to give its citizenry 3 or 6 incompatible antennas in every location.)

And if you like reading about how electronics has developed over the years, you can read how the greatest _radio_electronics_ inventor EVER (every radio design today; FM and big parts of TV) was driven to despair, eventually suicide, by RCA changing standards and bankrupting him.

Progress means change, and change means winners and losers. In an engineering-focused country such as China (almost ALL the top leaders are engineers), solutions are chosen for their technical merits and national interest. In America, the government sets standards for converting from analog to digital TV, working with consumers, broadcasters and manufacturers to prevent disruptive changes that needlessly redistribute wealth.

And then you have this outrageous power play by Google, in the fine tradition of RCA, of trying to knock out their biggest competitor by poisoning the well of online video that it otherwise handles superbly well.

Maybe this is just a ploy by Google to get MPEG-LA to announce that h.264 is free to implementers, as they have already announced that presenters of free content can continue to use h.264 for free, forever. That'd be great. This little kerfuffle passes, and Google puts YouTube back up in h.264 (where it plays great on almost every device able to handle video) and back into Chrome, so owners of inexpensive smartphones can still see it despite manufacturers thinking that VM8 and Ogg are too oddball, too buggy or too poor quality for the bitrate you can get over cellular in 2011.

But it smells otherwise. The "effort" to support h.264 is minimal; removing support that is already there is just an attempt to force support for formats that it has an interest in.

-5

01/12, 06:07pm | report spam | close reply

Re: Whatever...

To argue Flash is popular and thus justified to rule makes about as much sense as saying CD should be purchased instead of MP3s for music.

And to argue that Flash support should be dropped completely even though it is used heavily throughout the web makes about as much sense, too. But that doesn't stop people here just trying to wish it away.

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Microsoft likens Google's H.264 drop to abandoning English

updated 11:35 am EST, Wed January 12, 2011

Microsoft jabs Google dropping H264 in Chrome

+1 for Microsoft

I totally agree with Microsoft

Only a P'Tok would drop H.264

the lines are being drawn...

Did you know that MS is one of the patent holders.

Google is trying to get everyone's information

s**** you Appple and Microsoft with it!

Esperanto

Stupid

Whatever...

EGAD!

Short Memories On Display Here

For once I agree with Microsoft, Dumb decision Goo

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Re: Whatever...

Just use

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Microsoft likens Google's H.264 drop to abandoning English

updated 11:35 am EST, Wed January 12, 2011

Microsoft jabs Google dropping H264 in Chrome

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+1 for Microsoft

I totally agree with Microsoft

Only a P'Tok would drop H.264

the lines are being drawn...

Did you know that MS is one of the patent holders.

Google is trying to get everyone's information

s**** you Appple and Microsoft with it!

Esperanto

Stupid

Whatever...

EGAD!

Short Memories On Display Here

For once I agree with Microsoft, Dumb decision Goo

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Re: Whatever...

Just use

Login Here

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