Google removes H.264 support in Chrome

http://www.neowin.net/news/google-removes-h264-support-in-chrome

 

99% of the comments are negative and I agree, seems like Google is shooting themselves in the foot here.

 

i dont think removing support is gunna help them, but i do think its a good direction to move in ideally.

 

More on the politics here:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/11/google-flash/

The last line goes like this:
Don’t feed us ~ Snipped as per TOS ~ and call it filet mignon. We can smell it. And taste it. And spit it back at you.

 

The last line would’ve had much more of the intended dramatic effect if the article was actually accurate. It isn’t, for a number of reasons.

1. Apple is only one among the hundreds of other MPEG-LA licensees, and Google is involved in direct competition and/or partnership with numerous other licensees as well. Saying that retracting h.264 support was specifically meant as a shot at Apple is a tenuous leap of logic at best.
   
2. Saying that the WebM IP hasn’t been litigated yet makes it “murky” was complete nonsense. I’m surprised that a TechCrunch article was actually this ignorant. If the MPEG-LA group had any evidence that the WebM codec infringes on their IP rights (which isn’t difficult to find, given that the WebM/VP8 codec is open source), there would be no worry whatsoever of them not managing to secure $$$ in damages from a company like Google if they sued and won. There is every incentive for them to claim IP infringement in court, but they haven’t done so because they can’t and the best they can do is spread FUD about “potential infringement”. And TechCrunch actually fell for it? I’m disappointed.
   
3. There are very good reasons why Google should continue to bundle Flash with Chrome. One is the security issue, as mentioned in the TC article. Apart from constant updates to avoid vulnerabilities, Chrome’s custom-shipped Flash plugin can be sandboxed by the browser (coming in a few days’ time when Chrome 9 is released), further improving security. The second is that, while HTML5 video is barely in its fledgling steps, Flash is even more ubiquitous than h.264 in online videos, and even then Flash is hardly restricted to just online videos. Flash is everywhere NOW, while there are still plenty of opportunities to steer the HTML5 video landscape towards open solutions - which was a large part of its original purpose in the first place.

 

You got that from this?
"Of course, it’s much more complicated than that. One of the big backers of H.264 is Google’s ever-growing rival, Apple. More specifically, the technology is front and center to much of what iOS has to offer. iOS, which is the main rival to Google’s Android platform."

Simply amazing!

Also you've chosen to ignore the main point of the article which, IMO, was Google's cant over openness while continuing with Flash.

 

iOS is a mobile OS. h.264 is a video codec. How is h.264 "front and center to much of what iOS has to offer", exactly? If h.264 is really as entrenched and prevalent as the TC article claims, how is Chrome - a browser that doesn't even run on Android - withdrawing support for it going to hurt iOS? Last but not least, Apple's success with refusing to support Flash and depending on h.264 for video content relies on its ability to coerce other platforms and content providers to go along with its policies. That's Apple's own gamble to make, and if it fails it has nobody to blame but itself. Neither Google nor anyone else is obliged to play along for Apple's sake.

I honestly fail to see any basis for that sentence in the TC article other than just to contribute to the sensationalist soundbiting style of the piece. Do you?

That's exactly the reason why I found the article to be so stupid. The thing with ideals is that they are, well, ideals. Some are feasible under a given set of circumstances, some others not so much. I thought that should have been blatantly obvious without me having to spell it out, but there you go.

 

Microsoft bolts HTML5 video onto Chrome browser for Windows 7 users

 

Reminds me of this classical clip:

-http://www.berro.com/funny_videos/hi_jack_funny_clip.htm-

/Don