Our feet are firmly on the ground, so you can keep thinking in the clouds.

In the never ending acquisition dust of Google (I think they are on number six in 2010 and we aren't 1/2 way through!) interesting developments are all over the RumorNet that Google will release the VP8 video CODEC (COder - DECoder) to anyone, freely - via Open Source. This is exciting news, no doubt, but what does it really mean?

Google acquired a company named On2 Technologies this past February. On2 developed a great set of technologies for video, from compression, through to encoding and publishing and offered capabilities to use their warez within embedded devices (like running on a tiny chip in a phone for example).  On2's previous VP6 CODEC was used by many to encode and deliver video that plays nicely within the Flash environment.  It really works, and works well.

H.264 is another CODEC - very popular, and in use pretty much everywhere.  H.264 uses advanced techniques to create stunning video results in relatively small payload sizes.  HD video streams on the web are pretty much all H.264.  H.264 is used by the major video conferencing industry (Cisco, TANDBERG, Polycom, Etc.) and is used for the overwhelming majority of digital television distribution - not to mention BluRay and the Apple iTunes store (videos).  There is one nagging problem with H.264 - the complicated licensing and royalty model.  If you figure it out, send me an email, and you will be my pal (or at least I will think you are smart).

With VP8 being released Open Source (note, Rumor!), the licensing/royalty thing may get very simple, in very short order.  What remains after that point, is who will adopt it.  There is no doubt that Google is looking to evolve the HTML5 standard, and video is a big part of that.  With VP8, Google Chrome will no doubt playback VP8 video at the outset.  Google also owns YouTube - the biggest Internet video archive ever.  Changing this to VP8 will be a huge incentive for Flash and the other browser camps to natively support VP8.  This is really big news when you look out a year.

Some questions remain:

1. Will VP8 produce the same results as H.264 for web video?
2. Can we easily extend VP8 (being Open Source and all)?
3. Will the work many have done (ourselves included!) in tuning their use of H.264 port to VP8?
4. Is Open Source really free?  Kidding, that's a way bigger question...

I am excited about what this means.  Let's see where it goes.  Google is expected to speak to this at Google I/O, later in May.

Being a company that seeks to bring ease to Internet publishing, with Video taking the central stage, we watch the HTML5 and Flash developments closely.  I have been involved in web development one way or another for most of my adult life (not that I am grown up yet, no) and I have seen a few developments come and go.  Two in particular, HTML and Flash, have stood the test of time, but is that going to change?

It's hard to consider HTML as a 'development' looking back now, but really, it was.  Back in the late 80's and early 90's, when Tim Berners-Lee invented HTML, he had no idea that it would become a defacto standard, and then on to a standard.  HTML no doubt was here to stay.  Fast forward to 1994, and 'Cougar' makes a debut and eventually becomes HTML 4 - a huge leap including support for scripting, styles, extensibility and much more.  HTML 4 remains with us today as the most widely accepted markup language of all time, and it works (for the most part).  HTML 5 is very new, and is making promises to be a better HTML for things we like on the web - animations, video, styling and forms.

Flash has been with us for a long time as well.  John Gay and Robert Tatsumi were doing some cool things with Pen computing, and had a breakout product in SmartSketch (funny enough, the guy who designed Bill Gates' house bought a copy!).  AT&T got involved, bought 'Go' (their company, founded in 1993) and scuttled the project and technology.  The end was looming.  Never to be put down, SmartSketch technology was seen as a way to make animation easier on the Web - but the runtime was Java, horribly slow and crippled at that time.  Something new happened however, the concept of a 'Plugin' was made into reality within the Netscape browser, and a new product came to be named FutureSplash Animator - the grandad of Flash.  Another company sale (this time to Macromedia) and another name change (this time to Macromedia Flash) and a way to bypass the IETF (HTML 4 standard) with a plugin architecture, and Flash went viral.  The rest of course, is history - with that history about to be rewritten with the emerging Flash player 10.1.

We are now at a crossroads, HTML 5 is a draft standard, which will no doubt be accepted by all.  It brings many things Flash has provided for quite some time. Flash is a defacto standard, and has a 99% browser penetration, and does video, animation and complex tasks (wow, that simplifies it too much, Flash purists please forgive!).

Apple is betting on HTML 5 - it brings animation, video, audio, forms and more.  Adobe is betting on Flash - it has animation, video, audio, forms and more. I bet that this will play out for some time, but ultimately, if you can standardize on something - officially - it wins.  Standards take a long time to develop however, partly due to the involvement (and posturing!) of those interested in ensuring the standard supports what 'they' want.

HTML 5 is here to stay.  Flash is here for a long, long time.  Our technology is HTML 4 (XHTML compliant) and uses Flash for video.  We'll watch closely, as per usual. iPhones, iPads, Androids and WebOS's, they are influencers, big ones.

Kieron