Google this week issued a statement concerning the future of the H.264 video codec and its Chrome browser. They said they would not be supporting the codec due to its refusal to accept the licensing requirements imposed by the owner of the codec, MPEG LA.
Instead of the H.264 codec, Google will be supporting its own open source WebM codec and the Ogg Theora codec in future versions of the Chrome web browser. Google Chrome Product Manager Mike Jazayeri posted in a recent blog that publishers and developers were concerned that they will have to maintain multiple copies of content if Google ceased the support for the H.264 format.
Jazayeri stated that the move was specific to the HTML video tag in HTML5, and that Google will still support Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight plugins that work with H.264 videos in various web applications.
