MPEG-4 (H.264 video codec)

Owners

Holders of patents for the codec are the companies Apple Fujitsu Microsoft, Philips and several other companies. The MPEG LA company which is going to begin to levy a payment for use of the patent in 2015 disposes of a patent pool. However in 2010 the company stated that free distribution of web video in H.264 format will remain free and from now on.

Competition to the WebM format

As it became known in January, 2011, the Google company is going to refuse support of H.264 standard. Experts see approach of "corporation of good" to mobile devices of Apple and aspiration to see own Google WebM format as the uniform video standard in this demarche.

"Though H.264 plays an important role in video, our purpose consists in support of open technologies. Therefore support of the H.264 codec will be deleted from the browser", said in the statement of representatives of Google published in the blog of the Chromium project. Under the name of Chromium there take place a running in future releases browser Google Chrome.

Nevertheless, despite commitment to open technologies, developers of the browser, apparently, are not going to expel proprietary Adobe Flash Player from Chrome.

Chrome is neither the first, nor the only popular browser which will fail support to the widespread H.264 codec: the first it was made by Firefox. The piquancy of a situation with Chrome consists in what Firefox, unlike Google, do not have in the property of the video services similar to YouTube which practically all content is provided in H.264 format.

To H.264 format there is a free alternative under the name Google WebM. Having provided this development at the Google I/O conference in 2010, then Google stated that it is not going to refuse support of H.264.

Google WebM does not require runtime royalty fees, and in addition to the developer on behalf of "corporation of good" has support of creators of the Firefox and Opera browsers. A part of video on YouTube is already converted in WebM.

Commenting on a demarche of Google, market participants were separated into several fractions. Developers of browsers, potential acquirers of licenses for H.264, welcomed news from the colleagues from the Chrome command.

Alexander Slovesnik, Mozilla Russia project coordinator, commenting on failure of Chrome from support of H.264, said that he "very much is glad to it". The Firefox browser developed by Mozilla does not work with H.264 video format and, according to Slovesnik, it is not going to do: "We have no money for licensing and even if would be, we would find for them more reasonable application".

Developers of the Opera browser believe that even the total failure of Google services from application of H.264 with transition to WebM will not entail in the short term of serious changes for web developer. According to the director of the Otello Corporation standards (the former Opera Software) Charles McCathie Nevile, "serious hosters or already support, or are going to begin support of WebM shortly". However he recognizes that though support of this or that standard is especially internal affair of the producer, the declaration of Google of failure from support of H.264 turned out very provocative.

The Internet market is in waiting of implementation of HTML5 standard which provides processing of a video flow the browser without application of special plug-ins, such as Adobe Flash Player. Therefore the built-in support of video formats browsers during an era of HTML5 will play a basic role in gaining market shares and a darkness, and others.

The international organization of W3C which is engaged in development and deployment of Internet standards still did not select the uniform video standard for HTML5. Now for this role there are three applicants: OGG with the Theora, H.264 and WebM codec. Theora positions obviously weakened recently due to the lack of serious lobbying. H.264 is supported by Apple and Microsoft, and WebM in addition to Google is supported by developers of the Firefox and Opera browsers.

The statement for fast failure from H.264 in the Chrome browser is an explicit signal to that WebM became the uniform standard for HTML5, and this signal came earlier, than it was expected, Charles McCathie Nevile says.

The declaration of Google did not cause joy in developers of video services. Evgeny Kukushkin, the technical director of the largest Russian video portal RuTube, says that he under the pretext of fight for open standards and lack of runtime royalty fees of Google wants "draw a blanket on himself in attempt to build up an own ecosystem" on the basis of platforms GoogleDocs GoogleTV Android, YouTube and other.

The expert does not see for WebM of technology advantages over H.264. He speaks about implementation of the WebM standard as about "the crude and requiring serious completion". For ensuring high-quality video playback of high resolution it is important to user to have hardware support of this codec on the computer as it is made with H.264 that in case of WebM is not present.

Aggressive policy of Google with failure from support of H.264 in the browser can rouse owners of video portals to provide coding of the video using WebM, or even in two formats: in H.264 and in WebM. But the portals working with professional video of high resolution will hardly go to it, the technical director of RuTube notices: the cost of such transaction will be very high, and benefits are doubtful. It is unlikely the possibility of watching video via Google Chrome is worth it to spend millions of dollars.

At last, a part of the experts polled by CNews in the forthcoming exception of H.264 of Google Chrome sees new chapter in opposition of Google and Apple. The observer of the equipment of Apple, the director of the products Unreal Mojo, the application developer for iPhone and iPad Alexander Patsay says that a demarche of Google - blow to Apple as to the competitor of Google in the market of mobile devices. "iPhone have a hardware support of H.264, but there is no hardware support of its alternative of WebM. Strictly speaking, it is absent now in any devices, but Google as to the founder of WebM, will implement it for Android more simply, than Apple for iOS". Even date of the announcement of failure from H.264 is selected not casually, he notices: it occurred in day of the presentation of sales of iPhone by the American operator Verizon.

Not so long ago Verizon was the main apologist of Android among the American mobile operators and actively criticized iPhone in the advertizing Motorola Droid. Now the network agreed with Apple about sales of iPhone, and in day of the announcement of the agreement partners received "gift" from Google.

The fact that Google wants to make the open codec the standard it is good. But how it does it - it is pure hypocrisy, summarizes Patsay.