{"id":25738,"date":"2011-01-15T19:49:47","date_gmt":"2011-01-15T19:49:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/the-background-a-modernized-set-of-standards\/"},"modified":"2011-01-15T19:49:47","modified_gmt":"2011-01-15T19:49:47","slug":"the-background-a-modernized-set-of-standards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/the-background-a-modernized-set-of-standards\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00bb The Background. A modernized set of standards for the web\u2019s lingua franca, HTML, is currently underway. Once it\u2019s finished, that will be HTML5. The web\u2019s updated language that will include a \u2018video\u2019 tag that can be read by browsers directly, eliminating the need for slower plug-ins. But there are two competing standards for what kind of video the \u2018\u2018video\u2019 tag will read. One is the pay-to-play H.264 standard, which is covered by the patents of 10 different companies; anyone making hardware or paid web services has to pay up for those patents. The second is the open-source WebM standard, created with technology purchased last year by Google (NSDQ: GOOG). As Jayazeri describes in his blog post today, the negotiations over what to use as the \u201cbaseline\u201d codec reached an impasse. The makers of the Firefox and Opera browsers refused to support H.264, because it\u2019s patented, while Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) refused to make their browsers not support H.264. (Apple and Microsoft, perhaps not coincidentally, are two of the 29 patent-holders getting paid by when royalties are collected for H.264 devices.) So in this week\u2019s announcement, Google is picking sides. And it\u2019s upset a lot of folks who have been thrown for a loop because H.264 is already the much more prevalent standard, especially in hardware devices. (For example, practically every mobile phone and video camera is now being made with a chip that has built-in H.264 support.) But Jayazeri argues (and presumably the powers-that-be at Google believe) that the benefits of having an open and unpatented Web outweigh. openness And the new post makes clear that the argument here is really all about the fact that H.264 is patented. Google acknowledges that right now, it has broader support than the WebM standard, but argues that the danger of a patented Web is too big to not do something about. Jayazeri writes: \u201cTo use and distribute H.264, browser and OS vendors, hardware manufacturers, and publishers who charge for content must pay significant royalties\u2014with no guarantee the fees won\u2019t increase in the future. To companies like Google, the license fees may not be material, but to the next great video startup and those in emerging markets these fees stifle innovation.\u201d So will users of Google Chrome suddenly be shut out of a lot of web video? No, but they\u2019ll have to use a plug-in like Flash or Silverlight. And that\u2019s the source of one of the main prongs of criticism against Google\u2019s move\u2014that it\u2019s hypocritical because Google is still supporting the very proprietary and non-open Flash. But both Google and Mozilla seem to have decided they\u2019ll have to live with Flash for now\u2014just as Apple has\u2014and criticizing the company for not banning all non-open software is a bit disingenuous, as CNET\u2019s Tom Krazit points out.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Google: Decision Over Video Format Is All About The Patents | paidContent<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00bb The Background. A modernized set of standards for the web\u2019s lingua franca, HTML, is currently underway. Once it\u2019s finished, that will be HTML5. The web\u2019s updated language that will include a \u2018video\u2019 tag that can be read by browsers directly, eliminating the need for slower plug-ins. But there are two competing standards for what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-quote","hentry","category-words","post_format-post-format-quote"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-6H8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}