Google is buying On2 Technologies, a video compression company that powers the video in many desktop and mobile applications and devices including Adobe, Skype, Nokia, Infineon, Sun Microsystems, Mediatek, Sony, Brightcove, and Move Networks. On2 Technologies is headquartered in Clifton Park, NY.
According to NewTeeVee, just about everyone who powers online video or has their own Flash player, including Adobe, continues to pay On2 licensing fees for its VP6 video codec. However in the last couple years the industry has largely chosen H.264 as VP6’s successor. Still, VP6 is already installed on computers everywhere, and with Google managing its licensing fees (or even dropping them), the format could come back into power, opines NewTeeVee.
Google is reluctant talk about specific product plans until after the deal closes, although it’s conceivably related to its immensely popular video service YouTube, says TechCrunch.
The intent of the H.264/AVC project was to create a standard capable of providing good video quality at substantially lower bit rates than previous standards. Wikipedia compares H.264 and VC-1, the video codec standard initially developed by Microsoft which supports compression of interlaced content without first converting it to progressive, making it more attractive to broadcast and video industry professionals.
Microsoft Silverlight is a web application framework with a scope similar to Adobe Flash and supports VC-1 video. Both Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flash are proprietary. HTML 5, the next major revision of HTML, was initially planned to obsolete plug-in-based technologies like Flash and Silverlight, but in July 2009, the draft specification dropped the recommendation of the free software Theora and Vorbis codecs, after opposition from Apple and Nokia.
This means HTML 5 does not currently specify a common video codec for Web development, says Wikipedia.
