
  Google Acquires Video Compression Technology Company On2 For $106 Million  - GVRV
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/05/google-acquires-video-compression-technology-company-on2-for-106-million/?awesm=tcrn.ch_3Ao8&utm_campaign=techcrunch&utm_medium=tcrn.ch-twitter&utm_source=direct-tcrn.ch&utm_content=twitter-publisher-main
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ZeroGravitas
So remember there was a flurry of talk about what was going to kill Flash a
few months back?

This (meaning Google's fairly clear intention to make some kind of royalty
free video codec from what it's just bought) has just killed Flash and moved
the web forward about 5 years.

I wonder if they'll create a new standard around the technology (perhaps pair
it with the Ogg container format or with Vorbis audio, run it past some
standards org like IETF) and/or release it as is.

It's a fairly big move for Linux Multimedia support too.

~~~
jncraton
I don't think this is going to kill flash, or at least not for a while. The
speculation that Google is going to switch YouTube over to HTML5 any time soon
is quite far fetched. They would be alienating a large part of their user
base.

What this does provide is the possibility to have a universally supported
HTML5 video codec. At the moment, there isn't a single one that is going to be
supported by all browsers. Without a well supported codec, HTML5 video tags
are basically useless in production. This new deal doesn't automatically kill
flash, but it does somewhat level the playing field between flash and HTML5 in
terms of video.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Youtube already has specialist interfaces for smartphones, iPhones, Big screen
TVs, and 6 or 7 different Flash versions based on quality/bitrate, size and
codec. They can easily add another using HTML5, particularly if it provides a
better experience for those using Google's Chrome browser or OS.

YouTube native on the iPhone was already a major blow to Flash (as was the
whole touchscreen phone/computer paradigm). This _will_ kill it (in
conjunction with a bunch of other stuff Google is pushing under the umbrella
of HTML5).

Video in Flash has always been an aberration created by dodgy patents,
licensing considerations and competitive posturing of big companies, now the
market can correct itself and Flash (for video and otherwise) is going to have
to compete on its own merits. In brief: dead man walking.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
I really hope you're right. I would love nothing more than to see flash go the
way of .rm

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mdasen
VP8 is an amazing codec. If Google makes it available under FOSS terms, it
would be huge. It's more CPU friendly than H.264 while providing better
quality. Wow. Maybe it's a little far-fetched to think that Google would spend
$106M to open-source something, but when you think about it many companies
have paid more to do the same (or for things that were already open source).
Novell paid $210M for SUSE. Sun paid $1B for MySQL. And having the best video
codec as a free codec does fit with Google's open strategy.

And it might even be cheaper over the long run. Remember, while H.264 is free
to broadcast right now, there are fees coming in a year or two just for
pushing H.264 over the web. If nothing else, Google's ownership of On2
provides a hedge against getting hit too hard by royalties.

~~~
dan_the_welder
One hundred and six million dollars is nothing in this game.

Youtube acquisition price. 1.6 Billion <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15196982/>

Youtube estimated daily losses 1.65 Million
[http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=715&#...](http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=715&doc_id=175123&);

They could pay that shit off by Thanksgiving if they push a browser plugin out
by mid September.

~~~
chrisbolt
When are people going to stop citing the wildly inaccurate Credit Suisse
report? <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=573281>

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neovive
This is an excellent strategic move by Google and further evidence to the
notion that Google is trying to marginalize the various core elements of the
Internet experience (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=693861>). If they
open up VP8 and have it become the default built-in video codec for HTML5
browsers, it puts a lot pressure on Apple and Microsoft and even Adobe. At the
price they paid, it was definitely a great deal for them.

------
xccx
A reddit comment on this purchase says this:

    
    
      Google tends to look a few steps ahead. 
      Remember that whole debacle with GOOG-411 
      and speech recognition? They intend to use 
      the free GOOG-411 service to improve their 
      speech recognition so that YouTube videos 
      can eventually have automatic closed captioning, 
      and can -- in turn -- be searchable by Google 
      and can offer a whole new era of video search 
      results.
    

The automatic closed captioning is especially interesting. Any truth to it?

[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/97rc8/if_youtube...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/97rc8/if_youtube_is_causing_google_to_lose_millions_a/c0bpz24)

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Part of Google Voice is automated transcription of voice mails.

It's still not perfect, but like close captioning and OCR of books, it doesn't
have to be 100% to be useful for search purposes.

------
pilif
worst case scenario: One more codec we have to encode videos in if they were
to be supported by the <video>-tag: Safari uses h.264, Mozilla uses Theora and
Chrome now uses any of the newly acquired codecs to save on h.264 license
fees.

Before this, we just had h.264 and Theora.

Better scenario: Google opensources some or all of the acquired codecs and
gives a free patent license (I don't think they can give the patents away to
public domain, can they?) at which time, we'll have Safari on one side and
Chrome / Mozilla on the other which basically is the same as we had today, but
reversed.

Best-case scenario: As above, but the HTML5-guys agree to actually mandate the
use of one of these new codecs forcing compliant browsers (this then may
include Safari) to implement them and thus we only need to encode the video
once (assuming youtube supports the new codec aswell, because we'll need to
still fall back to youtube for IE).

Or anything in between.

Just don't get your hopes up.

