h.264 Controversy: Don’t Be Evil?

On Tuesday Google announced that they will discontinue support for the h.264 codec on Chrome. For many professionals in the video community this is more than just a bit disconcerting. In order to give you a sense of the effect, it may help to do some explaining.

First: Google. On Google’s “Our Philosophy” page the company lists 10 core principles that guide their actions. Before going on, at least take a minute to read through headlines of each point. Pretty great, huh?

Lists like this are why I love Google. Most multi-billion dollar corporations aren’t exactly interested in living out a philosophy. Google, of course, is a different kind of company and their business models rely on different kinds of consumer interaction. In fairness though, they have maintained these principles pretty well and this definitely has factored into my decisions to switch to their products. Our business uses Google apps, I personally use the Chrome browser and Gmail, and most of the world gets their data from Google’s Search Engine and Analytics. When deciding who to give the majority of your personal information to, a company that cites “Don’t be evil” as a core philosophy is a compelling choice.

...But Anakin Wasn't Evil Either

And that’s what makes their recent move regarding h.264 support so confusing. For those of you who don’t have to deal with video codecs as often as we do, here’s a brief rundown. h.264 is the standard for professional compression on the internet right now. It’s very efficient, allows for a range of output settings, and is overall just very easy to encode for.

Here’s the issue for Google: h.264 licensing and use is owned by the developer, MPEG LA. h.264 is not open source and the purpose of the Chrome project is to promote open source software. And I get that, really I do – especially with net neutrality becoming such a contested topic and the FCC attempting to permanently hover over our shoulders. However, it does seem a little convenient that Google owns the codec they are supporting – a codec otherwise pretty irrelevant. More convenient when you consider that they are trying to directly compete with HTML 5, which supports h.264 and requires a licensing fee. Maybe if they can help us avoid paying for it they feel that they’ve completed their job.

My Work Here is Done

There’s just one problem – this hugely conflicts with the interests of most web content providers. Not that it’s a big deal to download a Chrome Plug-In for viewing, my concern is more about how this affects popular perceptions. Am I supposed to tell my regular viewers and clients to download the Plug-In? Most people would sooner browse someone else’s content, though hopefully they will stick around for ours . Or maybe we will just have to recommend viewing on another browser – which is a bummer because I love Chrome’s usability!

It makes even less sense given that h.264 is GOOD – it works incredibly well across a wide array of machines and is easy to encode and upload with. I respect Google’s desire to press onward in the evolution of technology, but sometimes we just need to catch our breath.  And it’s not like a change in support, they’re simply dropping support entirely.

Full details are still unclear, so I could be missing something here.  And I’m not going to turn my back on Google just yet… actually I don’t even think I could.  Maybe that’s the point.

-Remsy

*for another perspective, this article explains the situation very well