Google gave developers advance warning Tuesday that it will withdraw support for the popular H.264 video codec in its Chrome web browser, though the change isn’t expected to take effect for a couple of months. The goal is to put Google’s resources squarely behind WebM — an open-source video technology unveiled by Google last year that is already supported by Adobe Systems, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and more than 40 other publishers, software and hardware vendors.
“We are changing Chrome’s HTML5 video support to make it consistent with the codecs already supported by the open Chromium project,” noted Chrome Project Manager Mike Jazayeri in a blog for developers. “Specifically, we are supporting the WebM (VP8) and Theora video codecs, and will consider adding support for other high-quality open codecs in the future.”
Adding Unwanted Complexity
The move will have an unwelcome impact on web-page designers, since it will compel them to use a different codec when converting their existing H.264 videos into content compatible with the new HTML5 standard for web design.
“Web-site owners who have content in H.264 will face the task of having to convert that content if they want to have it viewed by new releases of the Chrome browser,” said Al Hilwa, director of applications development software at IDC. “It is definitely more complexity for such web sites, as they now have to mange even more format fragmentation amongst the browser makers.”
Some industry observers believe that Google’s withdrawal of H.264 support has little to do with promoting open standards and more about not having to pay codec royalties to rivals Microsoft and Apple, which hold some of the essential H.264 patents marketed by the MPEG LA patent-pool organization. “Given that Microsoft and Apple have solid support for H.264, this may be back to the future with HTML…