14 DAY TRIAL // Google's move of dropping support for the proprietary H.264 video codec in Google Chrome has certainly managed to get a huge debate going. While Google's choice of 'open' technologies is admirable in theory, critics say that, in practical terms, it will only serve to make HTML5 even less attractive.
Mozilla for one, though, is celebrating the decision and is lauding Google for taking this stance, not surprising since it's the stance Mozilla itself has taken since the beginning of the HTML5 video codec controversy.
Mozilla evangelist Mike Shaver, which has been a strong voice in the codec choice dispute, calls it a "great move" and says it should prove beneficial to the open web.
"Today, Google announced that it is joining Mozilla and Opera in exclusively supporting open video codecs — to wit, WebM and Theora — in their Chrome browser," Shaver writes. "It’s a great move, and one we at Mozilla are obviously glad to see."
"Organizations like Google, Mozilla, Opera and others who really believe in the importance of unencumbered video on the web are putting their products where our mouths are, and the web is going to be stronger and more awesome for it," he added.
From this perspective, Google's decision should help the open codec camp a great deal. While Google Chrome doesn't have the market share Firefox enjoys, Google owns YouTube, it released WebM as open source and dominates several areas of the web.
It also has the money and will to fight against any attempt by companies such as Apple or Microsoft or anyone else to take to court any open source video codec that becomes popular enough to be a threat, based on patent infringement.
"No one owns the Web," Asa Dotzler, another Mozilla veteran, who hasn't been afraid of criticizing Google in the past, writes.
"Mozilla, and our friends over at Opera, have insisted on this important fundamental principle of the Web as we've built out support for HTML5 <video> in our browsers. Today... Google has joined Mozilla and Opera and lent its significant weight to this critical aspect of the Web," he said.
Mozilla has never agreed to include support for H.264 in Firefox. While the codec is free to use, building the functionality into any reasonably popular software requires a paid license. It wouldn't be cheap, but Mozilla could afford to pay it if it wanted to.
The problem is elsewhere, Firefox couldn't be distributed in its entirety as open-source software if it included support for H.264 and derivative projects wouldn't be able to pay or want to pay for the license.
But Mozilla's choice has not been without critics as well. H.264 has become ubiquitous online and offline and, for a long period of time, there was no real open-source alternative as Theora was deemed largely inferior.
This changed when WebM was introduced, which both Mozilla and Opera support, along with Google, but even WebM is considered a lower quality option.
Critics have said that Mozilla's stance only meant that Flash, which included support for H.264, would continue to be used instead of HTML5 and the same is now true for Google's move.