Google defends H.264 removal from Chrome and says WebM plug-ins coming for nternet Explorer 9 and Safari.Google plans to develop extensions that would load its self-owned video codec and it will happen anytime soon………
Google announced WebM plugins for Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 and Apple Safari.WebM appears that the HTML5 video tag battle is going to get ugly and it’s not clear whether there will be a standard anytime soon.The plugin announcement is reminiscent of Adobe’s stranglehold on online video with Flash. Certain browsers requiring a plugin to support WebM video isn’t very different. Google is actually trying what Microsoft has already attempted. Last month Microsoft announced an updated version of its Windows Media Player plug-in for Mozilla Firefox that enabled H.264-encoded video on HTML5 by using built-in capabilities available on Windows 7.Microsoft and Apple are betting on H.264 since it is much more widely adopted and because it has hardware decoders which allows mobile devices to get long battery life and smooth performance for video playback. Google developed WebM as an alternative and it has managed to get Mozilla and Opera on board because it is more open and is free. Microsoft has said that Internet Explorer 9 would only support H.264, but that it would make an exception for WebM, as long as the user installs the corresponding codec. Apple has so far stayed silent and is sticking solely with H.264.All the browser vendors agree that their software should have support for the HTML5 video tag, but they can’t agree on the standard that will allow it. The discussions around the recent announcements from Google and Microsoft have been interesting.
