I cannot wait to rub it into all the "but H264 is already standard, there is no way that there will be another format supported" zealots. For a patent-free better future!
Right, but not many organisations are in a position to come along and do us all* a big favour as Google is here. Between being able to afford it, having a browser and a mobile OS, and YouTube, they are really holding the right cards to do this. Anyway, my point is, if Google weren't going to do it, then those 'zealots' would quite possibly have a point.
*I am under no illusion that 'us all' doesn't largely include Google themselves in this case, of course.
I haven't taken it as H.264 zealotry so much as an opposition to using Theora for reasons that practically boil down to idealism. A free, open standard that is also technically superior, well... that's a big win all around.
I would guess that they will in order to speed its adoption.
If they don't, it won't be long until there exists an open-source implementation. There already exist very high-quality open source implementations of H.264, like x264. Since VP8 won't be patent encumbered, there will probably be even more impetus to create one.
excuse my ignorance, but would that list of vendors possibly include Mozilla? I would imagine that having both Firefox and Chrome support VP8 day one would be a major shot against H264 becoming the standard.
I assume it would considering the close relationship Google and Mozilla have had in the past, and the fact that Mozilla should be very much ideologically behind this (assuming Google does open source it, as someone else said I'm not sure if Google themselves have actually confirmed this).
Well Firefox, Opera, and Chrome all support Ogg and nobody cares. Safari and IE are all that matters since they are what ships with their respective OSes. H.264 is already the defacto standard. If Google somehow convinced Apple/WebKit to include VP8 out of the box then that might put pressure on Microsoft. That also puts most of the weight of the smartphone market behind VP8. But they also still support H.264 and hardware decoding is much more mature for H.264 now, too.
Safari on Mac OS X (or Windows) doesn't carry that much weight. Its global market share is half that of Chrome, and roughly the same as Opera. Even in its best market (North America) it's going to be rapidly overtaken by Chrome in the next month or so. There's also at least 3 good cross-platform alternatives for people to use.
Safari on iPhone and iPod isn't too great an obstacle either despite their mobile mindshare because they only support H.264 baseline and that (combined with their mobile nature) means a separate video file is probably recommended anyway.
And on the Microsoft side only IE9 is announced as supporting HTML5 video (with H.264 amongst a few other codecs), and no-one knows when it's coming out, probably some point in 2011 and not for Windows XP. Plus since Microsoft's VC-1 died off they don't really have a dog in this fight. They'd have to balance the minor benefit of H.264 patents being a hindrance to open source rivals (but not Apple or Google) against falling behind web standards if everyone else goes VP8.
So the one Google really want to convince is Adobe Flash. If they're on board you get effective 100% uptake within a year of release across all desktops (XP, Windows 7, Mac OS X) and all browsers (inc. Safari and IE 6, 7 and 8) and that's the kind of leverage you need to get Microsoft and Apple to follow domino style. And similarly to Microsoft they gain no real business benefit from H.264 files that can just as easily be served outside Flash.
I would be surprised, if Adobe would be not on board during Google I/O announcement. It was announced that Google is going to tightly integrate Flash with Chrome, support Flash in Android and ChromeOS... so what they would get in exchange for that? VP8 support in Flash would be one thing.
Wouldn't Google just have to switch it's YouTube HTML5 support to use VP8 instead of H.264 in order to "win" this? If YouTube really does make up 40% of the online video market, Google has the largest ace in it's back pocket.
I believe the vast majority of youtube users still see the flash version though (even those who use browsers that would support the HTML5 version?), so that wouldn't matter as much.
On the order of a year. We'd need to wait for them to source a VP8 chip from somewhere, write drivers for it, integrate, and test--same as everybody else.
I really hope that Flash and every major browser, including the iPad one, is on that support list, then you'd only have to encode videos once for the web.
