HTML Video Codec Support in Chrome
The web's open and community-driven development model is a key factor in its rapid evolution and ubiquitous adoption. The WebM Project was launched last year to bring an open, world-class video codec to the web. Since the launch, we've seen first-hand the benefits of an open development model:
Context & Ripple Effects
The HTML5 video fight has been building for two years: Microsoft's IE team endorsed the new multimedia tags back in 2009, published its own HTML5 video position in April 2010, and Adobe shipped an HTML5 Video Player widget for Dreamweaver in October as toolmakers began hedging toward the tag-based future. What was missing was a consensus codec — and Google's answer, launched through the WebM Project last year, was VP8.
This post makes the stakes explicit: Google frames Chrome's codec support as a bet on 'open' development, and the announcement landed far beyond developer circles — Ed Bott at ZDNet, Daring Fireball, and TechCrunch all picked it up within hours, each reading it through a different vendor lens (Windows, Apple, and Flash respectively). That pickup pattern alone signals the decision redraws lines between platform companies, not just formats.
First-order effects
- Publishers serving HTML5 video can no longer rely on a single H.264 file reaching every major browser — Chrome-bound viewers will need WebM (or Theora) encodes added to the source list, multiplying encoding pipelines overnight.
- Browser makers are forced to declare sides: Google's framing casts H.264 support as a licensing commitment rather than a technical choice, pressuring rivals to justify their own codec picks in public.
Second-order effects
- Flash becomes the pragmatic fallback again — sites wanting one encode everywhere route around the codec split via the plugin, which is exactly the outcome TechCrunch's 'dropping Flash next, right?' jab points at and which cuts against the HTML5 displacement narrative Adobe's own widget work feeds.
- Hardware and encoder vendors who built H.264 silicon and toolchains face a second format to support in browsers, raising the cost of the 'write once, play anywhere' promise that made H.264 attractive in the first place.
Third-order effects
- If Chrome's market weight holds, web video drifts toward a royalty-free baseline (WebM) while H.264 retreats to native apps and devices — shifting leverage from patent pools like MPEG LA to whoever controls the open codec roadmap.
- A fragmented codec landscape also reopens the door for platform owners to use codec support as a differentiator rather than a commodity, entrenching the browser wars inside media delivery itself.
The trend: HTML5 video is fracturing along codec lines, with Google using Chrome's reach to push royalty-free WebM into the default stack against the licensed H.264 establishment.