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Comments: 133 +- Technology: Google Acquiring VP3 Developer On2 Technologies on Wednesday August 05 2009, @01:01PM
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by
timothy
on Wednesday August 05 2009, @01:01PM
from the my-crystal-ball-shows-the-web-is-good-for-video dept.
from the my-crystal-ball-shows-the-web-is-good-for-video dept.
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R.Mo_Robert writes "BetaNews is reporting that Google is acquiring On2, the video codec company and original developers of the VP3 codec from which Theora is derived. The article suggests that this may mean Google is backing Ogg Theora as the HTML5 video standard, but this is likely not the case--with Theora already being open-source and On2 having disclaimed all rights and patents, there is no reason Google should have needed to do this to push Theora. You may recall from some time back that HTML5 no longer specifies which video codec(s) a browser should support due to there being, unfortunately, no suitable codec at this time. But Google (known for supporting H.264) practically owns Web video with YouTube in most people's minds, so their influence could really swing the future of HTML5 video either way. It remains to be seen whether Google's acquisition of On2 has any bearing on their plans for video on the Web."
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VP3 is old (Score:5, Interesting)
Theora was based on one of On2's earliest codecs. VP6 & VP7 have been far more successful and are even used as the Flash video codecs. If Google is acquiring On2, it could mean that they're looking to open up the formats that have defined Flash as the media player of choice.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Except VP7 is way too slow to decode on SIMD processors. The problem isn't the total amount of processing, but the amount of processing that is sequential in nature (ie not SIMDizable). So they didn't notice until they tried to optimise for concurrancy (as found in X86 media extensions as well as most DSPs and low power media processors). By then it was too late - oopsie!
Cue a massive backpedal with VP8 which runs in a little over half the cycles compared to equivilant VP7. See http://www.dspdesignline.com/
Re:VP3 is old (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Owning VP7 can't hurt.
How would it help? Google is pretty much entirely dependent on other software to get video content to the user, whether it is Flash, video plugins or the browser alone. Owning the codec means nothing if they can't convince the browsers to implement it. As things stand now VP8 is in an even worse position to be adopted by browsers than either H.264 or Theora.
If they do open it up, with a royalty-free transferable patent license, then it has a pretty good chance. Mozilla's and Opera's problem with H.264 was t
Discontinuity (Score:2)
As a developer, I can say that Google's product suite is unsettlingly dynamic. There's a new API every week or so, and no asssurance of futures. For example, I was all excited about using Google's JS extensions (with the ability to load/save data locally) but I've yet to see this working anywhere but Windows. Chrome is nice but Windows only, there's now (finally!) a Linux version, but it's so buggy that it often crashes X windows. And now they have their own O/S!? Two?! But which one should I use?
It's a mis
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As a developer, I can say that Google's product suite is unsettlingly dynamic. There's a new API every week or so,
Yes, new APIs are a serious problem... Sorry, what?!
and no asssurance of futures.
This is different from... what? If Google goes away or (more likely) drops a project, the APIs aren't going to be worth much, but if [company X] goes away or drops a project the same is true. Was there a point in that?
For example, I was all excited about using Google's JS extensions (with the ability to load/save data locally)
That's a standard HTML5 feature now. Bad choice.
but I've yet to see this working anywhere but Windows.
Firefox 3.5.x on all platforms. I believe IE has committed to this or possibly even shipped, but for now you can use gears under IE. Latest Safari also supports HTML5, which is why the Latitude
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Batman--
You gas a PASS. And the original article gets a FAIL.
I wish they would do a little more research before posting these articles.
This is about taking the codecs in the latest version of Flash and merging them into Chrome/HTML5.
So what is the reason for this? (Score:2, Redundant)
So can we speculate the reason for Google's action? Let's speculate. I'd like to see what is on minds of slashdotters.
Re:So what is the reason for this? (Score:5, Informative)
No speculation, I submitted this story also, with a quote from Google's Blog:
So it doesn't remain to be seen whether Google's acquisition of On2 has any bearing on their plans for video on the Web.
Parent
Re:So what is the reason for this? (Score:5, Funny)
"For the same reason we acquire every other company, to try and take over the world!"
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
One aspect is that Flash 8 adopted VP6. VP6 runs adequately on punier cpus (single threaded 500-800 Mhz or so little cache) like those used by Android compared to H.264 at similar resolutions and bitrates. Another reason is that going forward the licensing for VP6 is going to be free for google compared to using H.264 (there are currently some rates that are essentially 0 for H.264 for those streaming rather than devices but that is set to expire).
One good thing that may come as a side effect of this is tha
Chrome, HTML5 disaster coming (Score:2, Interesting)
So now Chrome can support only VP6/7 in die tag, Apple does it's quicktime thing, MS does .wmv and Firefox OGG. Hooray!
Honestly, i don't think that would happen, i hope that it may be open sourced and that Android will get some "high quality" video stuff (as far as you can get that on mobile displays).
Re:Chrome, HTML5 disaster coming (Score:5, Insightful)
Chrome supports anything it can legally
Firefox supports anything it can legally
Safari supports anything it can legally
IE tries using only WMV for a little while, then opens up to other formats to slow the exodus.
I could see Google and Apple using their websites to push one codec or another, but I think they want their browsers to be as capable as possible.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
LOL, you might be onto something there.
Re:Chrome, HTML5 disaster coming (Score:5, Informative)
No, apple has stated they have no intention of supporting Ogg.
FTFA
Apple is the only vendor that will not be supporting Ogg.
MS is out of the debate because they will not be supporting <video> at all.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
How would a situation that is slightly better than the situation that exists today in any way constitute a disaster?
With the iPhone supporting H.264, plenty of websites are going to follow, and it is reasonably likely that some third party will come up with a shim that enables H.264 in Firefox (using FFMPEG, some derivative of FFMPEG, or maybe Windows internal codecs (if there is support there, I'm not paying attention)).
An open web standard? (Score:2)
Google has a lot to gain by upgrading or replacing Ogg Theora in order to create a codec which is suitable as a web standard. The biggest item which could get in the way of Android taking off is proprietary video embedding using Flash and (especially) Silverlight.
I hope they pour huge resources into the development of such a standard, and release it as open source. This would not be out of character for Google, based on what they did with Chrome. It would be a benefit for end users, and a competitive gain f
No suitable codec? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a bit misleading. There are several suitable codecs. The problem is the major players involved with their "Not Invented Here" mentalities.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:No suitable codec? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually the problem isn't "NOT Invented Here" it's "Invented Here - please pay us". So Theora doesn't have the quality, but H.264 is patented. Neither is suitable to all interests for those reasons. Those were the leading contenders, others suffer from the same issues. So now that Google owns a good codec, clearly they'll use it. The question is weather they'll let others use it and on what terms. IMHO they should allow anyone to use it for free. Adding yet another proprietary codec to the web would be detrimental, while the upside of codec licensing is probably small potatoes to Google. Freeing a good codec would mean easy access to Google video for everyone and not-as-easy access to MS and Apple.
Parent
Re:No suitable codec? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well I don't think that's quite right, either. You have to choose between a poorer-quality codec with no hardware support and a widely-supported codec with better quality but requires a licensing fee.
Parent
No there wasn't. (Score:3, Informative)
There was no codec that was suitable to all the needs of the major browser developers. Having to pay royalties was an impossibility for Mozilla and Opera, and thus made H.264 (or any of the official MPEG codecs) unsuitable for them. Apple's concern about submarine patents on Theora technology was legitimate, as was the lack of hardware implementation (although that would've been resolved in time). Furthermore, Google's concerns about quality were legitimate if the goal is to move things forward beyond the c
Re: (Score:2)
In what way is VP8 "highly efficient, even better than h264"? I hope you're not reading their press releases based off of imaginary information.
Used by Youtube (Score:3, Insightful)
They're already buying the milk. Might as well just pay for the cow.
Re:Used by Youtube (Score:4, Informative)
YouTube has never used the VP6 codec.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Sorenson Spark and H.264
My guesses for why (Score:2)
1. They're getting a good patent portfolio that they can use to defend their investment in YouTube with. They're fairly heavily invested in using ffmpeg which may [ffmpeg.org] have patent issues.
2. They're getting some very smart people and a user base that they can use to help steer the direction of video they way they want it to go.
3. VP7's being used for video chat by Skype and AIM - they might find it useful for their expanding telecommunications offerings.
Google wanted VP8 because it is a great ARM codec (Score:3, Informative)
VP8 was designed to deal with ARM chips and we know that Google Chrome OS will run on ARM chips. Why isn't this being connected in reports? Tech journalists are incompetent.
Re:Google wanted VP8 because it is a great ARM cod (Score:2, Insightful)
But lot's of media oriented ARM platform already got h264 (and other) hardware accelerator...
It will be difficult to beat them with pure software.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, many of those ARM Media-Oriented SoC's (Read: anything from TI, Qualcomm, NVidia, etc...) actually have media DSPs and they're doing the h.264 decode with the DSP core instead of dedicated hardware...
In any case where you see one of the new ARM Cortex-A8/A9 based media chips, you'll be able to implement h.264 or VP3-VP8 in the system with relative ease. Including the iPhone...
On2's modern codec - vp8 (Score:2, Interesting)
FFmpeg support (Score:4, Interesting)
Googled OWNED video (Score:3, Interesting)
YouTube still loses money hand over fist, where as Hulu is growing in revenue and popularity.
It is extremely easy to rip videos from YouTube, which might be a sticking point in YouTube getting more mainstream/commercial content. Frankly, I don't want to see adds for lame user-generated content on YouTube. And I do find most YouTube content lacking. But at the end of the day, if both YouTube and Hulu had say, full Simpsons episodes, I'd rather support Google's site rather than NBC's site.
These developers could perhaps tweak their existing code to develop a closed, DRM-laden codec that would allow YouTube to stream commercial content. And if YouTube doesn't make a move like this, it may just continue to hemorrhage money from here to eternity.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually On2 has a commercial hosting arm.
Re: (Score:2)
YouTube still loses money hand over fist, where as Hulu is growing in revenue and popularity.
There are limits to how much Hulu can grow. Unless they get their international issues sorted they'll never reach the size of audience that youtube has.
Having said that, spreading a few servers around the world or buying content distribution service isn't exactly difficult.
Why Google is doing this (Score:4, Insightful)
Google can now use On2 codecs such as VP8 in YouTube, for free. No more royalties. But the royalties are not that expensive [businessinsider.com] so this isn't likely a big deal for them. (Google could save more money by using smarter settings on their H.264 encoder [xiph.org].)
Do you think Google will seriously try to make money by selling codecs? I don't. $100 million is small change to Google, and if that's all it cost to buy On2, then the On2 revenue stream must be trivial by Google's standards.
So, Google won't save much money and won't make much money by buying On2. I think they are up to something else.
What I think is more interesting is the possibility that Google will give On2's latest technology to the Theora guys. Just as Sun started giving away OpenOffice.org after buying StarOffice, it's likely that Google will give away some or all of the On2 technology.
Despite being based on technology that is nearly a decade old, Theora is already fairly competitive [mozillazine.org] for web video. (Theora is better than H.263, which has actually been used for years, so it's difficult to argue that Theora is not usable for web video.) Now imagine that Theora gets the best technology bits from a modern On2 codec, and integrates those, such that Theora really is as good as H.264, or even better.
Now imagine that this improved Theora is bundled with Google Chrome and Firefox, bundled with Android, and bundled with Google Chrome OS. Within a few years, Theora could become firmly established everywhere as a baseline standard that anyone can use.
Google likes things that make it easier for Google's customers to use Google's services. They like their customers not being locked into proprietary technologies not owned by Google. It will be impossible for Google to take the market away from H.264, but it is very possible that they could make sure their customers can always easily access their services.
Note that this scenario utterly depends on the new Theora being free software. Google could try to sell a proprietary On2 codec and gain a significant market share; well, if they try it, all I can say is "good luck with that." It's hard to push out an established standard; to do it, you need to be significantly better, not just a little bit better. Better technology, with Google behind it, completely free (and with no need to even keep track of how many codecs you ship out) might succeed.
steveha
It's about silicon (Score:2)
such that Theora really is as good as H.264, or even better.
H.264 has a major advantage - implementation in silicon (hardware acceleration).
Google owning On2, and convincing vendors that YouTube on GoogleOS on Google Devices is going to need silicon, providing purchasing commitments, and having the team onboard that knows how to do things like re-write the codec for devices without FPU's can create the necessary momentum to bury the MPEGLA. Steve Jobs did us a short-term favor a few years back on h.264, bu
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
On2 bought Flix... On2 became the one-stop shop for Flash video encoding.
It's readily apparent that Youtube was and is using Flix for Linux, based on all the capabilities and limitations YouTube encoding shares with the open source MPlayer project (http://multimedia.cx/eggs/poking-at-youtube/), which is used by Flix for Linux (http://support.on2.com/gpl/mplayer/).
It wouldn't be the first time Goo
Question... (Score:3, Insightful)
How is a company that makes video codecs worth $106.5 M? I for one am very confused.
And for God's sake please give me a Slashdot 1.0 theme! I can't take this JavaScript-laden hell.
This is a big money saving move. (Score:2)
106.5 million? Look how little that is compared to the amount of money they'd lose, licensing H.264!
VP8 should give similar results to H.264 as used on Youtube. (Lots of quality enhancing features turned off to speed up encoding)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
But that would be evil.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, maybe the original investors in On2 were smart enough to put non-compete clauses in the contracts of the engineers they hired for their start-up. After all, when you invest millions of dollars in a start-up, you usually want to protect your investment.
-Todd
Re:Google probably wants the engineering taltent. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it's likely that they want the company's IP, too. Go back and look at the whole HTML 5 and Theora debate. Apparently Google is paying some kind of licensing fee for h264 for both YouTube and Chrome, probably for Android and ChromeOS too if they're providing support. Theora is an open source version of On2's codec that is both old and doesn't have any hardware support.
I don't think it's too much of a stretch to guess that Google wants to open up On2's most recent codecs and try to push other companies to support it. That way they could use the same video formats for all their products without paying additional licensing fees. Plus, they can move YouTube to using HTML5's "video" tag without having to keep a Theora copy to support Firefox/Linux and a h264 copy to support Safari/iPods/iPhones/AppleTVs. Think of what they'll save on transcoding and storage.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
... and they no longer have to pay a fee to On2 for each encoded video if what I hear (that they licensed some custom servers made by On2 for processing videos) is true
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Sadly, your statement was never true. Everything you think of as from Google was bought except the original Pagerank (obsoleted about a week after they started using it), which is licensed from Stanford. And AdSense, responsible for 99.9999% of their revenues, feeding the rest of the company, was bought and started from work at Brown University.
Please provide evidence for anything you think Google invented in-house.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Gmail? I'd say that's pretty key.
I also didn't say it was a bad thing, it just reminds me of Cisco.
Re: (Score:2)
Google has recently unveiled Google Voice, Android, Chromium, Wave and announced they are making Chrome OS. Purchasing a codec shop doesn't invalidate the fact that Google is still making some awesome products.
Facebook is supposedly the single most popular site on the web right now. And doesn't Microsoft own a big share of Facebook?
Facebook usurped Myspace's spot, and Myspace arguably was the successor to Geocities.
Who could knock Facebook from their perch? Google could with Wave.
Imagine one integrated serv
Re: (Score:2)