Last Week Google announced WebM, a new web media project that combines the VP8 codec (which Google acquired in its purchase of On2) with the Vorbis audio codec and parts of the Matroska multimedia container. As part of this project Google has open-sourced the VP8 codec, which could have far-reaching consequences for the future of video in HTML5.
If you're late to the HTML video game, here's the play-by-play: the upcoming HTML5 specifications include a <video> tag, which is intended to provide integrated video playback in web pages without the need for a third-party plugin (the browser would provide the necessary video decoding and playback controls). However, the HTML5 spec doesn't specify a particular codec to be used for the video content. At present, the state of browser support is varied: Google Chrome and Safari both support the proprietary H.264 codec, with both browsers' parent companies paying licensing fees to include the codec. Chrome, Opera, and Firefox all support the Ogg Theora codec, a free and open source alternative that many say provides inadequate quality. IE currently supports neither, but has confirmed that the upcoming version 9 will support H.264.
Up until recently, this was a standoff: Apple and Microsoft won't use Theora because they say it lacks the performance of H.264, and Opera and Mozilla refuse to use H.264 because it's patent-encumbered and they want to avoid paying licensing fees.
Enter Google. In August of 2009 it acquired On2, the company that owned the up-and-coming VP8 codec, which was rumored to offer comparable performance to H.264. At the time there were murmurs that Google planned to open source the codec, thus potentially putting an end to the "video wars" once and for all. Well, that's exactly what Google has done.
