Google’s planned alternative to the widely adopted but patent-protected H.264, which allows for online video viewing.

What is it? A compression scheme being released under a royalty-free open-source licence.

What does it do? It is being promoted by Google as an alternative to the widely adopted but patent-protected H.264, which allows for online video viewing.

Why is Google doing that? Because H.264’s patents mean that some browsers, such as Firefox and Opera, don’t support it directly and use Theora instead. Google hopes that VP8 will provide a better alternative to H.264 than Theora.

What happens next? A Google-backed project called WebM will define a file format based on the Matroska open container format that uses VP8 video.

How do I find out more?www.google.com

Topics