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Comment by jon_dahl | Hacker News Reader

This article rightly points out that we don't know much about VP8 first-hand. But we can infer a lot.

First, VP6 is a pretty decent codec, widely available for comparison. Not as good as H.264, but better than Theora and (IMO) MPEG-4 ASP. Even if Google was only releasing VP6, that would be pretty compelling. It's reasonable to expect that VP7 and VP8 are incremental improvements over VP6. No one knows exactly how much, but if a free VP6 would be exciting, then a free VP6+ would be even more exciting.

Second, Google didn't pay $120M based on On2's marketing website. They obviously evaluated On2's tech first-hand and decided that it was worth buying.

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I think VP6 could be the key. If I was in charge of codec strategy at Google I'd be investigating at least these two things in parallel:

1. Will Adobe join us in introducing a brand new video codec (whether it's VP7, VP8, or something new based on them) to Flash, and if not...

2. What is the theoretical maximum quality you can wring out of VP6 without breaking backwards compatibility with the installed Flash base if you throw unlimited cash at it.

They can start up a skunkworks to build the next big codec to challange H.26_5_ if they want, but the need to do something soon if H.264 isn't going to become entrenched.

Some people will say VP6 is crap and that only better quality can win, but you'll note they only say that when something they like wins. For example, Apple fans point to the quality of iPods and iPhones as why they're successful, but point to idiot consumers, network effects and dodgy dealings to explain why Mac OS has a similar global marketshare to the perennial joke that is desktop linux.

Similarly apparently H.264 won because it's some kind of design-by-committe miracle baby, yet AAC isn't a stand out technically and coasts along on the coattails of it's video codec partners. And it's still not ousted it's inferior older brother mp3 in general usage, even with Apple's help.

Installed base matters. If Google make a video announcement that doesn't involve Adobe, I'll be very disappointed.

A huge amount of On2's revenue came from Adobe paying them for VP6.

Perhaps Google can come in and say "it's free if you include VP8 too"

It'd be interesting if this is how Google & Adobe get together to push back against Apple.

I guess I don't really see why such an announcement has to be made in conjunction with Adobe. YouTube already keeps several different versions of a video encoded at different settings and with different codecs. If they were to release VP8, I assume that they would just keep VP8 copies for HTML 5 and other copies for other players and/or user settings.

While it would be nice to see Flash Player integrate VP8, Adobe's cooperation doesn't seem critical to me.

It's not about Youtube though. If Google only cared about Youtube then they'd be going with H.264 as the licence fee cap disadvantages both smaller video sites, and people who want to self-host.

Youtube is important because they can encourage large numbers of ordinary folks to adopt whatever solution they use, and as a large-scale example to show that whetever technology they use is feasible at that scale. But if they free a codec then the point is for all the other websites to adopt it, and for that Flash would be an invaluable partner.

Adobe says that they get near 100% update rates within a year so any new codec will get out there fast. Faster if Youtube prompts people to click the updater. Not that users of Google Chrome will need to worry, as Google has conveniently decided recently to bundle Flash and auto-update it for them without intervention.

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