Comments on: Google: You Buy Some, You Sell Some

By: Seth Cohen

Seth Cohen — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:47:19 +0000

Could be that Google is just trying to get out from under Adobe. AFAIK, Flash is not free to commercial entities & at the quantities that YouTube is consuming, it could be very expensive.

By: Jesse Kliza

Jesse Kliza — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 13:27:29 +0000

Congrats to our neighbors over at On2 Technologies! They’ve got an awesome product, and it’s great to see another big win like this for the area (especially right next door!).

- Jesse
Apprenda | Enabling Software as a Service

By: aufreak

aufreak — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:48:56 +0000

I think what we’re seeing here is the market on its way, working its magic. For long, codec vendors have gone the “we make codecs and we want you to pay us every time you use it” kind of licensing terms that plague even the likes of H.264 today. Companies such as google, if they can buy off all the rights to all parts of a codec, can very well put a price on what the world thinks a codec is worth rather than the codec developers. Ogg Vorbis and Theora came into existence also for the very same purpose.

The codec licensing models of the past are obsolete and we’re going to see those sticking to them come crumbling down. They are comparable to selling a hammer with a price on every nail you use it to hammer. Examine google’s move in the light of HTML5′s tag – which codec should the video use?

By: Yuvamani

Yuvamani — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 08:29:18 +0000

Since Google bought them, that license cost will become Free.99. Also they may remove any kind of patent protection or anything else for others to use them. I do not know the legal standing here, But with cross patenting, I doubt anybody is going to sue Google over VP7. (Apple threatened Palm but could not sue because Palm had patents on many things on the iPhone, Something similar may apply here). This means that Google can convince Firefox to use it.

This is mainly a move to make sure flash video dies and tag is actually used in HTML5.

As it stands today the tag is useless. Apple,Google wants you to use H.264 which Firefox will not use because of some licensing / patent snafu. Firefox wants to use Ogg Theora which Apple, Google will not use because of some murky IP (thats what they said – not me), also it looks like Theora is inferior (from the comments above) . Microsoft will most definitely use windows media only.

So me web developer will continue to use Flash video. Which works you know – everywhere.

The funny thing though is even if they made it free, Only chrome and firefox will have support for the codec. With Apple and Googles new relationship, Safari will not add support for it. And MS – the less said about them the better.

I think Flash Video will still win… And Google, I still do not understand your acquisitions

By: Gaetano Marano

Gaetano Marano — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 06:37:52 +0000

–
the On2 software could be useful (also) to develop a new (Wii/PS3/Xbox-KILLER) Online Gaming Platform, as predicted and explained four days ago in my GoOS blog: http://ow.ly/iScX
–

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:02:53 +0000

“But VP7 kicks ass, and when the company holds all the IP rights to the product”

Who says they own the IP? Just because nobody has ever sued them doesn’t mean they own the patents to VP6/7/8 codec technology. It’s nearly impossible to design a DCT-based codec without reusing technology already patented by others. Microsoft’s standardization of WMV9 into a SMPTE standard (VC-1) is a good example of that.

The chances of Google open-sourcing VP6/7/8 codecs are highly unlikely due to legal patent challenges that would immediately follow.

By: Michael Murdock

Michael Murdock — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 17:53:44 +0000

investing in a tech company requires that company to have something within it somewhere that warrants the investment. Obviously google sees something that others don’t. Whether or not it will be anything to compete with H.264 and the acceptance of that in the marketplace…only time will tell.

By: Tim Siglin

Tim Siglin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 17:08:21 +0000

Om, glad to see your mention of the holistic picture of On2′s proprietary (VP6,7,8) and H.264 (Hantro) portfolio, as well as Liz’s mention of the realities surrounding the current standards-based groundswell. Since On2′s been a constant player in the embedded device space, as well as in consumer low-latency, low-power consumption, bi-directional video chat applications, I highly suspect there’s a triple-play going on here that includes Android and other mobile devices.

While it’s too long to repost here, I commented on Dan Rayburn’s blog post on the topic, laying out Google might be doing to embrace both the open-source and standards-based communities, as part of this purchase, while keeping something for itself as an innovation barrier.

By: kllmnt

kllmnt — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:53:34 +0000

It’s better than others, when you think about freedom (as in GNU), but when you consider the video quality it only comes close to H.264 (when using newest theora encoder), and thats only in SD video. Further drastic enhancements to Theora which is based on VP3 is actually almost impossible due to patents involved in the technology.

so using theora for HD video is not a good idea (download and watch Big Buck Bunny in theora and H.264). But I still Love theora. :-)
Dirac seems to be a good alternative (maybe in 2012, when the SW and HW matured)

But VP7 kicks ass, and when the company holds all the IP rights to the product, it’s not hard to improve it ( and come up with, maybe VP10?….;-) )

By: fritz

fritz — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:51:06 +0000

if they do open souce it then it will be interesting looks like google is more interested in becoming the backbone of the internet now and is moving more and more into infrastructure
maybe they just want to give the tools for people to build the next gen services now and that way they control the underlying channels that innovation is built upon