What does Google have to gain from dropping H.264? Nothing at face value; it’s all to do with preventing H.264 from becoming the de facto standard for “Video on the Web”, not realizing that it already is. Perhaps Google made this move to try and dethrone H.264, but to that end, I have but one question: Why do it in a way that hurts your users when time itself would sort that out automatically? Faruk Ateş′ great write-up on the situation with Google’s rejection of the H.264 codec in Chrome. It’s one thing to invent a new codec or format, put it in your browser and lobby for other vendors and manufacturers to support it. But Google has completely shut off any chance for H.264 to be a really great standard for video on the internet. The author put it: “Time will take care of this itself”, which is quite obvious. VHS took care of Betamax, Blueray took care of HD-DVD. > If that’s really why they did it, and that’s all it is, then harming users in the process is a poor decision in my opinion. Especially since that very same goal could have been accomplished with just a little waiting.
"Google, H.264 and video on the web"
About 1 min reading time