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.