A View into Google's H.264 Decision

As high-bandwidth wireless networks are becoming more prevalent, Web video is increasingly being used as a medium for communication. Content providers are utilizing video as part of their messaging, and user-generated content sites such as YouTube and SmugMug are important components of the social marketplace. Because of the importance of video to the direction of the Internet, Google’s announcement that they would be dropping H.264 support from future releases of the Chrome browser has been heavily analyzed and widely criticized.

H.264 is a codec used for compressing and decompressing video data for delivery on the Web. Google has developed a competing codec, WebM, which is based on technology that Google acquired in their purchase of On2. Website developers who post video can create their video using either codec, then specify how that video will be played back. This is done by detecting which application is trying to open the video, then choosing a suitable playback application.

Google’s decision to drop H.264 support in Chrome is related to the <video> tag in HTML5 (now known simply as HTML without the version number). This tag was added to the HTML language due to the rise of video, but the codec used for the tag is under debate. Google’s position is that H.264 is not an appropriate codec to use since it is not a completely open technology. Opera and Mozilla also support this position. Microsoft and Apple have ties to MPEG LA, the consortium that controls H.264, so they support that codec.  Agreement on the codec used for the <video> tag would lead to a more standardized way of presenting video on the Web without the use of plug-ins like Flash.

Google is attempting to move the Web in a more open, standards-based direction. Unfortunately, this announcement will do little to support that movement. The majority of video on the Web today is encoded with H.264, and that is also the codec used by many recording devices. Hardware support in the form of on-chip optimizers and accelerators is also widely available for H.264, which is extremely important in the mobile space where chip power must be kept to a minimum.

Google states that hardware support for WebM is coming, but developers trying to reach a wide audience will not focus exclusively on upcoming chipsets and a browser with 15-percent market share. Likewise, developers with resource constraints are not going to dual-encode their video to optimize for all platforms. The Flash player, which is currently bundled with Chrome, will continue to support H.264 video and will start supporting WebM. Since Apple products do not support Flash, most developers will choose to continue to encode with H.264, playing natively on Apple and Microsoft products and utilizing Flash everywhere else.

If Google wanted to make a really bold move, they could drop H.264 support from YouTube, which they own. However, this would leave a huge opening in the space of video on Apple products, so that move seems unlikely. Dropping H.264 support for Chrome looks like an ideological move focused on open technology and standards, which is consistent with Google’s culture. However, as they desire to play in a broader market, they will have to consider the practical side of things more than they have before. They also will have to keep an eye on internal consistency—after all, Flash is not open technology.