Google has released a statement unveiling that it will be removing support for the H.264 video standard in future versions of its Chrome browser.
With this move Google is hoping to make its Chrome browser a more open project and will change its video support to the WebM (VP8) and Theora video codecs. The H.264 standard is currently used by Apple, Microsoft and Adobe’s Flash requiring licensing payments to be used and thus cannot be used in open source code.
Google will be changing the Chrome’s HTML5 <video> support to make it consistent with the codecs already supported by the open Chromium project.
“Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies.”
The changes are expected to appear over the next couple of months once publishers and developers have had a chance to to make any necessary changes to their sites.
Via V3