Google have just bought On2, the video codec company http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/05/google_to_buy_on2/
There is speculation that they will open source the On2 codecs, and use them on YouTube. Apparently Ogg is based on another On2 codec previously open sourced by them. They claim that their latest codecs are as good as h264, at the same bitrate. So I guess potentially this could be a win for open video and finally let all browsers choose a standard codec for use with HTML5. And I guess it'd be quickly adopted as the new web video standard. Having said all that, I'm not sure why Google would be motivated to open source it after paying 100 million for it, except for the greater good, to outflank adobe and microsoft and stick on in the eye to the potential patent problems with h264. I guess those are all good enough reasons. It's not like they paid real money for it anyway... Rupert http://twittervlog.tv
