IE program manager endorses HTML 5 multimedia tags
On Wednesday, Google's Mark Pilgrim published episode 35 of This Week in HTML 5, a series of articles that he is writing at the WHATWG blog to document the progress of the Web standards effort. In this episode, he praises Microsoft's Adrian Bateman …
Context & Ripple Effects
Mark Pilgrim's episode 35 of This Week in HTML 5, published Wednesday at the WHATWG blog, singled out Microsoft program manager Adrian Bateman for endorsing the spec's multimedia tags — a notable signal given that Internet Explorer has been the browser most identified with plugin-delivered media. The endorsement matters because it comes from inside the IE team rather than from standards advocates outside Redmond.
The timing is not incidental: per the surrounding coverage, Microsoft this week previews browser-based versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote to beta testers and positions the Office web apps as a rival to Google Apps. Web-delivered productivity software raises the stakes for standard multimedia handling in the very browser Microsoft controls, and Google's contested SEC-filed offer for video compression firm On2 Technologies keeps the question of who owns video codecs squarely open.
First-order effects
- Bateman's endorsement hands the WHATWG drafting effort a visible validator inside the IE team, signaling that Microsoft's browser group treats the audio and video elements as a direction worth backing.
- For developers weighing whether to author against HTML 5 multimedia markup instead of plugin-only delivery in IE, the statement from a program manager lowers the perceived risk of betting on the new tags.
Second-order effects
- Plugin runtime vendors whose web-video business depends on IE mindshare now face a Microsoft publicly aligned with native tags, while Microsoft's own push of Office web apps against Google Apps gives the company commercial reasons to prefer standards over its proprietary plugin stack.
- Rival browsers already trialing HTML 5 media gain ammunition in the interoperability argument, and pressure shifts toward agreeing on codecs — where Google's controversial On2 Technologies pursuit leaves video compression ownership unsettled.
Third-order effects
- If endorsements of this kind translate into IE implementation, web media delivery migrates from third-party plugin runtimes toward markup drafted at the WHATWG, eroding the gatekeeper position plugins have held in the browser stack.
- Codec governance becomes the structural follow-on fight: whether 'open' HTML 5 video stays royalty-free depends on who controls video compression, and the Google-On2 situation shows vendors understand that control is the prize.
The trend: Browser vendors are converging on WHATWG-defined HTML 5 multimedia, shifting web video away from proprietary plugins even as codec control remains contested between them.