FYI, Google is acquiring On2: <http://www.betanews.com/article/Future-of-open-Web-video-may-change-with-Google-acquisition-of-On2/1249481107> Also on Slashdot: <http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/08/05/1742249> Anyone knows what, if anything, this means for Theora, open video and/or the Xiph.Org Foundation? Wild speculation: considering that they complained about the bitrate/quality of Theora for Youtube and they are supposed to be "not evil", maybe Google wants to free one of the new On2 codecs? -- Lino Mastrodomenico
On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 2:18 PM, Lino Mastrodomenico<l.mastrodomenico at gmail.com> wrote:> FYI, Google is acquiring On2: > > <http://www.betanews.com/article/Future-of-open-Web-video-may-change-with-Google-acquisition-of-On2/1249481107> > > Also on Slashdot: > > <http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/08/05/1742249> > > Anyone knows what, if anything, this means for Theora, open video > and/or the Xiph.Org Foundation?It's a a kinda obvious move for Google to make, though they did a great job of not telegraphing the move. Practically everyone involved, including folks close to Google and On2, were surprised by the announcement. So we don't know much more than you. Given that Google hasn't said anything beyond 'YOINK!' there's no way to say what it means for Xiph/Theora (or more importantly, FOSS codecs in general). It could be great news, we don't know yet. The only thing we can say is that it is possibly not good news for h264. Time will tell.> Wild speculation: considering that they complained about the > bitrate/quality of Theora for Youtube and they are supposed to be "not > evil", maybe Google wants to free one of the new On2 codecs?That's one of the obvious possibilities. We don't know. They'll say in good time. Monty
I think that there is a bigger question in all of this. I do wonder if Google would directly engaging Xiph if they have any intention to Open Sourcing even one of the codec's that On2 owns (outside of VP3). If that is the possible case, some dialogue between the Foundation and the company would be nice since I would believe Xiph would be welcoming to that kind of donation(I assume). For me, I am not sure... nor am I going to attempt to speculate that within the things that I see in my "personal" crystal ball since they have only announced interest in the company, and signed a deal to acquire it. There is quite a few more steps before Google owns everything in On2, and really, my understanding is that it should not have much of any effect of Theroa currently. After all of that is done.... Anything could happen. But one thing that I do keep seeing from reports that do cover this is that Google is most likely to off-load the tech somewhere (which does seem a little reasonable from my perspective, it's not a part of the video business that Google would seem to take an interest in). And Open-sourcing seems to come up in the same sentence, so take that for what you will...