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Google Acquiring VP3 Developer On2 Technologies 133

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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Google Acquiring VP3 Developer On2 Technologies

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  • VP3 is old (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <`akaimbatman' `at' `gmail.com'> on Wednesday August 05, 2009 @01:02PM (#28960591) Homepage Journal

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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)

      by FooAtWFU ( 699187 ) on Wednesday August 05, 2009 @02:15PM (#28961591) Homepage
      Even if they don't want to open them up, you can imagine that they'd rather not be utterly dependent on Adobe Flash to deliver their YouTube content. Owning VP7 (and VP8/VP9/VP1234567 and whatnot) can't hurt.
      • by pavon ( 30274 )

        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

        • Google makes a browser. Google employs a load of software engineers. It would be trivial for them to integrate VP6 (for example) into Chrome for the video tag and provide plugins for other browsers (On2 already makes DirectShow and QuickTime plugins, which will be used by IE and Safari). If you want high quality YouTube pictures, you have to use Chrome or install the plugin. And, if you're downloading and installing software anyway, why not try Chrome?
      • 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)

          by ajs ( 35943 )

          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

          • by Khyber ( 864651 )

            "Yes, new APIs are a serious problem... Sorry, what?!"

            Think of it like the legal system. Too many fucking laws nobody can be bothered to remember them all.

            Too many fucking APIs nobody can be bothered to settle on one implementation, let alone support multiple implementations, let alone remember which API does which, etc., etc.

            AGREE ON A FUCKING *STANDARD* AND STICK TO IT.

            • by ajs ( 35943 )

              "Yes, new APIs are a serious problem... Sorry, what?!"

              Think of it like the legal system. Too many fucking laws nobody can be bothered to remember them all.

              Too many fucking APIs nobody can be bothered to settle on one implementation

              You've gone off the rails. Google's APIs are many and various, but I'm actually not aware of any API that they have that's redundant.

              What two APIs are you having to choose between, exactly? The only example I can think of is very much required: Blogger has a full-featured API, but it also offers feed-oriented access through RSS/Atom. A blogging site that didn't offer RSS/Atom wouldn't have many users, so there's nothing they can do there. However, it's not possible to provide a full API within the context o

        • It crashes X for you? I've been using chromium on linux for months, and I don't think that's ever happened for me. Not to say it's not a problem, but given that it's not even at an alpha state yet platform specific bugs are to be expected.
        • by jsight ( 8987 )

          Chrome is nice but Windows only, there's now (finally!) a Linux version, but it's so buggy that it often crashes X windows.

          "If an X server crashes, its a bug in the X server"

    • 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.

      • Exactly: as the submitter of this story, I thought it was odd that BetaNews seems to think it has something to do with Google liking Theora. On2 really has nothing to do with it anymore; they disclaimed and open-sourced VP2 long ago. (If there are any supposed patent issues with Theora, On2 certainly has nothing to do with it.)

        What is, of course, more interesting is the relationship of On2's newer formats to Flash...

  • So can we speculate the reason for Google's action? Let's speculate. I'd like to see what is on minds of slashdotters.

    • by Neon Spiral Injector ( 21234 ) on Wednesday August 05, 2009 @01:23PM (#28960905)

      No speculation, I submitted this story also, with a quote from Google's Blog:

      Because we spend a lot of time working to make the overall web experience better for users, we think that video compression technology should be a part of the web platform. To that end, we're happy to announce today that we've signed a deal to acquire On2 Technologies, a leading creator of high-quality video compression technology.

      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.

      • ...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.

        Actually, their blog seems to be pretty vague:

        Although we're not in a position to discuss specific product plans until after the deal closes, we are committed to innovation in video quality on the web, and we believe that On2 Technologies' team and technology will help us further that goal.

        I get that they want to do something with video and the Web...but that really doesn't tell us anything about their future plans, the most interesting one of which could be whether they plan to open any of these formats or

    • by 0racle ( 667029 ) on Wednesday August 05, 2009 @01:24PM (#28960929)
      "Why are we going to acquire this company Google?"

      "For the same reason we acquire every other company, to try and take over the world!"
    • Lots of big companies have already worked out who they need to pay off to use Mpeg4, but are suspicious about Theora because they're worried about patent trolls with all sorts of wacky claims coming out of the woodwork as soon as Theora takes off. Which is particularly difficult for companies that have a history of settling every lawsuit that comes their way rather than spend the money to fight. Apple has specifically announced that they won't support Theora for exactly this reason.

      Now, enter Google, a comp

      • by hkmwbz ( 531650 )

        Apple has specifically announced that they won't support Theora for exactly this reason.

        They are being dishonest about it. There's no bigger danger of such issues with Theora than with their codec of choice.

    • by mzs ( 595629 )

      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

      • VP6 runs adequately on punier cpus

        There is no codec that will run adequately on typical smartphone CPUs of today, VP6 included.

        Acceptable video performance requires hardware acceleration.

        Hardware for running H.264 is commonly available.

        AFAIK there is no commodity hardware available for On2 codecs.

  • 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).

    • by Shatrat ( 855151 ) on Wednesday August 05, 2009 @01:37PM (#28961091)
      I would predict:
      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.

      • LOL, you might be onto something there.

      • by ianare ( 1132971 ) on Wednesday August 05, 2009 @03:31PM (#28962635)

        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.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        I agree that Chrome and Firefox will support anything they can legally, but I do not think that Safari will implement Theora. Here's my rationale:

        Right now, Apple sees Google as a threat, as evidenced by the recent hostility Apple is showing toward Google. Specifically, Apple's blocking of Google Voice and Lattitude on the iPhone. They are "partners" in name only.

        This is because the smart people at Apple realize that Google's philosophy of inexpensive lowest bidder open platforms is the antithesis of App

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by maxume ( 22995 )

      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)).

  • 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.

    I'm not so sure. I doubt the vast majority of people who believe Internet Explorer to be the internet noticed that there was some kind of takeover. YouTube owns web video in most people's minds, yes, but it was difficult to tell anything happened even for those who did know what was going on. Even now, the bottom of the page says "© 2009 YouTube, LLC." Either way, I'm waiting for the day when YouTube uses the tag for displaying media and I can finally forget about FLV forever. Long time coming.

  • 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

  • Google is starting to remind me of Cisco.

    For years, Cisco innovated, created, well, MADE really cool things.

    Now, they just buy them. I see Google heading that route.

    (cue someone saying that Google still innovates, etc. Yeah, I know. So does Cisco. But all their major stuff in the past, oh, I dunno, 5 years at least, has been purchases of other companies making cool stuff.)

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Duncan3 ( 10537 )

      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)

        by Em Emalb ( 452530 )

        Gmail? I'd say that's pretty key.

        I also didn't say it was a bad thing, it just reminds me of Cisco.

        • by Duncan3 ( 10537 )

          Webmail has been around a lot longer then Google.

          • True, but Gmail was a reinvention of webmail. At the time, nobody else had a webmail application which used AJAX to such a great extent. No other webmail had Gmail's conversation interface. Most other webmail used folders instead of tags. And Google really pushed the storage limits -- I think Yahoo Mail was around 6 MB at the time.

            Just because they didn't invent the components doesn't mean the whole wasn't innovative. Either that, or you have some *really* high standards for innovation!
            • Remember when Google announced that they were going to offer a webmail service, with a 1 GB storage quota? Everybody thought it was a hilarious April Fools Day joke, and there was no way Google would do something so ridiculous and implausible. Turns out the joke is that they were serious.

      • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

        People innovate, not companies -- a company is just an abstract legal construct. And innovative people are "bought" with high salaries and environments which accept their innovation.

        So from that, yes, Google doesn't innovate at all, and neither does any other company. But Google seems to be pretty friendly toward innovators and seems to be encouraging innovation (like the 20% free time policy, which I've heard led to Google News).
        • by Duncan3 ( 10537 )

          Which is why I used the term "in-house". The companies are not people thread is down the hall.

          • In the second part of my last post, I mentioned Google News, which was developed in-house. According to Wikipedia, half of their new products resulted from that 20% free time [wikipedia.org]. If it was invented and developed while the employee was at Google, I'd say that counts as in-house, don't you agree?

            I'm not going to be a Google fanboy and claim they invented everything, but somehow I find it odd that Google would bring in lots of people who had good ideas in the past, and that those people would magically stop hav
    • it's the way of things with large companies. They can, and do, innovate. But they also know that there is a lot to be said for whipping out their checkbook.

      The important thing with this is that they keep the assets & people of the acquired company. I worked at ANS Communications, which was sold by AOL to Worldcom in the mid 1990's.

      ANS had a top-notch team, the best I have ever worked with. It had built the NSFNet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation_Network) more or less from sc

    • 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

  • No suitable codec? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nvrrobx ( 71970 ) on Wednesday August 05, 2009 @01:28PM (#28960983) Homepage

    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.

    That's a bit misleading. There are several suitable codecs. The problem is the major players involved with their "Not Invented Here" mentalities.

    • Does it count as being invented here if over 90% of the work done on it was before the company was bought and became part of "here"?
    • by gr8_phk ( 621180 ) on Wednesday August 05, 2009 @02:03PM (#28961451)

      There are several suitable codecs. The problem is the major players involved with their "Not Invented Here" mentalities.

      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.

      • Actually the problem isn't "NOT Invented Here" it's "Invented Here - please pay us"

        Wouldn't Bilski [wikipedia.org] render all of these patents invalid and therefore make this all moot?

    • by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Wednesday August 05, 2009 @03:01PM (#28962217) Homepage

      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.

    • No there wasn't. (Score:3, Informative)

      by pavon ( 30274 )

      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

    • The "no suitable codec" blurb is a quote from Hixie [whatwg.org]. I (the submitter) left out the part that qualified this statement with "no suitable codec that all browser vendors are willing to ship," which is more or less what you mentioned. I probably should have mentioned that to make the meaning of "suitable" more clear.

    • by H3g3m0n ( 642800 )
      It's not the "Not Invented Here", its more Apple trying to keep vendor lockin, and everyone getting videos from iTunes rather thn YouTube. MS trying to gain a monopoly over the internet with a priopratart wmv format and SilverLight. And everyone else trying to stop MS from gaining the monopoly while they have %75 browser penetration and %95 OS share. Haven't heard much from Adobe other then there attempts to keep flash in the game by opening up to phone vendors (which Apple ignored of course). Also the fact
  • Used by Youtube (Score:3, Insightful)

    by magister159 ( 993682 ) on Wednesday August 05, 2009 @01:45PM (#28961179) Homepage
    When I was researching creating my own video upload site I contacted On2 for information about licensing their flash video encoder. They claimed that "All major user submitted flash websites used their encoder", I assumed they were hinting at YouTube. Knowing this, an acquisition seems like a smart decision.

    They're already buying the milk. Might as well just pay for the cow.
  • 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.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05, 2009 @01:54PM (#28961305)

    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.

    • 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)

        by Svartalf ( 2997 )

        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...

  • Actually they have vp6 and vp8 http://www.on2.com/index.php?564 [on2.com] which -- surprise, surprise -- on2 claims is better than h.264 -- if google decides to open up vp8 -- it would change the equation radically. Particularly the ogg/vp8 combo. It's also possible some vp3 diffs (theora) would still be useful when applied to vp8 -- although what the chances of this are, I couldn't say. It does solve the h.264 patent license problem for google with android and chrome os. A theora / vp8 release and a move to
  • FFmpeg support (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DarkHelmet ( 120004 ) <<ten.elcychtneves> <ta> <kram>> on Wednesday August 05, 2009 @02:14PM (#28961573) Homepage
    As a developer using FFmpeg, I run into problems with our clients trying to encode / decode VP6 and VP7. I'm hoping that Google will subsequently offer open source implementations of these. It will make my life a whole lot easier.
  • Googled OWNED video (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Enderandrew ( 866215 ) <enderandrewNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday August 05, 2009 @02:23PM (#28961705) Homepage Journal

    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.

    • Actually On2 has a commercial hosting arm.

    • 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.

  • by steveha ( 103154 ) on Wednesday August 05, 2009 @02:30PM (#28961771) Homepage

    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

    • 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

      • "implementation in silicon (hardware acceleration)."

        I'd argue that's far less of an issue for Theora than people make it out to be. Theora is nearly a decade old, remember, and was quite usable on the now-nearly-decade-old computers. Most modern CPU's - even embedded ones - have got to have more power than my K6-2/300 did, and it decoded Theora video with Vorbis audio just fine.

        (That said, I would expect to see a lot more "firmware" decoding to become common using DSP's and FPGA's [I would have sworn the

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by evilviper ( 135110 )

      So, Google won't save much money and won't make much money by buying On2. I think they are up to something else.

      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)

    by mmaniaci ( 1200061 ) on Wednesday August 05, 2009 @02:58PM (#28962163)

    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.

  • 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)

  • I was hoping to see a Slashdot article on the latest Chrome beta, but that's probably a bit much. So can someone tell me what they think will show up in the new "Even More" section of the Chrome browser's New Tab screen?

    In 3.0.195.4, the thumbnails have been rearranged (2 rows, 4 cols). Along the bottom is "Recent Activities", which includes closed windows/tabs and downloads. And next to that is "Even More". The content of that box is the simple text, "What will we put here?" My guess: targeted adverti

  • If Google are smart, they will open up VP8 and create a new format with OGG container, VP8 video and Vorbis audio. And then use it for YouTube and in Chrome (I dont know how much it costs google to pay royalties on H.264 but it would definatly be more than VP8 would cost them)

    Mozilla (FF/SM/etc) would support it if it was free (and if a good decoder was available under a license Mozilla can accept)
    Opera would also likely support it if it was free
    Microsoft wont be supporting anytime soon (because they want

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