The Ohanaware Weblog
HTML5 v.s. Flash Round 3… Looks like Flash has a chance of beating HTML5.
This week the HTML5 (Apple) v.s. Flash (Adobe) battle took an interesting turn, when Google announced that they had created a new Open Source video format that they’ll be using for their HTML5 video.
This is bad news for Apple for a variety of reasons.
#1 if it’s Open Source it means anyone can easily support this format without worrying about licensing fees. Apple’s preferred format h.264 requires a license to use the technology, and therefore Google’s format may be more widely adopted.
#2 If everyone else supports this format and not h.264 (which is what Google is hoping for), then Apple will either have to support it or face web sites having incompatible video, and not working with their mobile devices.
#3 if the market becomes so fragmented (as this will be the 3rd different HTML5 video format that web browsers can support), it’ll require this web browser to watch video here, that browser to watch video over there and finally the last browser for this site over there somewhere… The market is ripe for one format to rule them all, one format that’ll work on most devices, and that format is already here!
You guessed it, it’s Flash! Flash’ll work in every browser except Apple’s mobile platforms. Hold on, isn’t HTML5 meant to save us from Flash video? Yes it is, but unless everyone can get together and make it easy for you and I (the end user), Flash isn’t going anywhere!
Maybe, just maybe… That’s what Google is actually up to? Maybe Google and Adobe are in this together, they bring out a video format that’s been described as “a mess” by engineers and who’s performance isn’t better than Flash, they fragment the online video world, making it ripe for a one stop solution. The one stop solution that Apple is trying to move the industry away from?
This is bad news for you and I because, I expect we’ll see the fragmentation on some sites, maybe some sites will offer different kinds of video. In the end I expect that many sites, will end up going back to Flash for video as it’ll work on the most devices and we’ll lose that nicely optimized battery friendly technology. Too bad…
Tags: Apple, Flash, Google, h.264, HTML5, iPad, iPhone, mac, Mobile, movie, Thereo, V8 video, video, WebM
May 23rd, 2010 at 1:10 am
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