Esperanto was created in 1887 by L. L. Zamenhof to be an easy-to-learn, politically neutral language in hopes that it would foster peace through international understanding. It was violently opposed by both Hitler and Stalin because they felt it threatened their totalitarian regimes.
WebM is an open-source and freely licensed video codec that Google hopes will spur online innovation by making it more available to individual developers. It's opposed by Microsoft and Apple (among others) because it threatens the income stream the receive from licencing H.264 to content producers / publishers.
Whether or not this ends up being a good move for Google remains to be seen, but I'd say that the comparison was unintentionally one of the smarter statements that Microsoft has made in quite some time.
Great post! This is a very intriguing drama for me to follow. I'm not so sure I agree with the statement "freely licensed," though... And the innovation hasn't necessarily been about the technology here as much as side-stepping patents. There is lots of good reading on this topic for sure. http://bit.ly/frfM7g and http://bit.ly/eaY5fc - for starters.
ReplyDelete(as a side note: I think our current patent laws are woefully inadequate to deal with issues like this. Very messed up. Unfortunately, it is the set of rules these companies are working with)
This whole things seems more about money than "openness" to me. In this context, they seem to be using that word more as a method than a philosophy. If 'teh Goog' would indemnify folks for using WebM (like they have previously criticized the H264 folks for not doing); then I might revisit my skepticism.
If this were truly about openness, I would think they would dump Flash... and maybe even MP3 support from their stuff (there are licensing issues there, too). It sort of feels like they are trying to sway things away from a status quo using rhetoric that applies to their own solution as well.
It's not that WebM is any less-burdened with patent/licensing issues than H264... methinks it's more about the fact that they have ownership interest in the patents/licensing surrounding WebM.
$0.02
I have to admit that I'm not as versed on the legal details of Google's WebM as I could be, but I know that Google makes money through advertising. More specifically, they're very good at making money through advertising because they try very hard to maintain a positive association with their customers. This is reflected in their famous "Don't be evil" mantra, and I think they do a pretty good job (though not a perfect job) of abiding by that.
ReplyDeleteGoogle also has the philosophy that if they can get more people creating more content and tools on the web then they will get a bigger slice of advertising revenue. In Google's mind, the big money isn't in owning and charging for a patent like WebM, but instead in expanding the overall use of Internet video and collecting on the resulting increase in ad views.
And, in all honesty, if increasing the use of Internet video can also erode the profit margins of competing companies, then that's not bad for Google either.
I find it highly unlikely that Google will ever try to capitalize on any WebM patents; I think that would be counter to their long term strategy as it would erode their good will.