Google has lately announced its decision to withdraw support of the H.264 video codec from the Chrome browser, because this codec is proprietary and not open source. Certain techie people find this reasoning suspicious since Chrome continues to support Flash, which is also not proprietary. The H.264 codec is widely seen as being the successor to Flash, but Google states in its announcement that it intends to support another codec, namely WebM, instead. I won't comment on these arguments since it isn't really the point of my post.

However, I have given you enough background to understand a satirical announcement about Esperanto that a blogger has written in order to parody Google's decision and reasoning.

(in brief: Google has decided to promote Esperanto [representing little-known and not widespread WebM] instead of English [widespread but not open-source H.264] since it is open source and not tainted by real-world usage)

erinja:...(in brief: Google has decided to promote Esperanto [representing little-known and not widespread WebM] instead of English [widespread but not open-source H.264] since it is open source and not tainted by real-world usage)...

The article you cite makes Esperanto seem positive despite its use in satire. However, other sites are picking up this story with the headline "Microsoft mocks Google, likens WebM to failed Esperanto language" -- so here we are again, stereotyped as dodos...

I saw this and knew that this would be mentioned here eventually!

I haven't seen the negative stereotypes, although if I had I would have been swearing about it before, but nonetheless I must agree with Microsoft's opinion. I don't think it's BAD for them to have WebM, but why not support both WebM and H.264? Chrome simply isn't widespread enough to convince developers to drop H.264 altogether and use the freer WebM, unlike Apple's iPhone which was insanely popular, changed the phone industry and as a result had the muscle to promote HTML5 (thanks to the lack of Flash).

Google's getting a bit trigger happy I think and has fired too early.

In a real world scenario, I can't think of anyway to describe it, but it's as if the UN made Esperanto the official language of the world. I'd imagine there's a very high chance that no one would really care, since the UN is pretty devoid of power unless it involves the most powerful member states. Similarly, Chrome has little power despite its backer Google having immense power.

Ah, not only that, but I'm wary of web video format wars. It's always so bloody hard to convert all these video formats to ones acceptable to iPods and PSPs

H.264 is stupid and should NEVER have been adopted in the first place. The patent holder has a right to charge any project implementing the codec, any persons distributing that software and any persons using that software.

Remember all the old painting programs that lacked GIF support because the patent holders weren't granting support to some of those developers before the patent expired?

WebM is senpaga and libera. H.264 is not senpaga and libereta. Regardless google's motives, this is great news.

Are you really calling it suspect that chrome supports flash? I think you meant to say that flash IS proprietary. In any case, flash has become a defacto standard because of adoption. Adobe holds the web hostage with their terrible CPU-consuming plugin on all platforms and runs poorly under Linux (lockups crashes). The motivation for HTML5 tag was to make flash obselete. Having people adopt H.264 over theora for video tags was not a step forwards. Great news then that google bought WebM, released it as libera software and then have thrown their weight behind it.

There will be no video format war. Google and firefox will support WebM. Youtube (owned by google) will switch to WebM. Other browsers can either support it or not (and have no youtube irritating their userbase). Good riddance H.264.

For all of you people watching video online- you won't notice anything since you're using flash with VP8... It's about an upcoming standard (HTML5) which browsers are starting to slowly switch to. Eventually sites will start to use the video tag instead of the evil that is flash. And then the web will be substanially more free (and I will uninstall flash forever).

Please edit the profanity out of your message, Genjix.

...at any rate I wasn't looking to start a format war here, only to call attention to an amusing use of Esperanto in an analogy (whether you disagree or agree with the analogy or the viewpoint expressed in the blog, I think it's worth a read)

ok I didn't mean to launch off into a rant. But as you can probably tell, I feel strongly about these sorts of issues and it's hard to control XD

I would like to add to what I previously said after doing some research. (There was another comment here before but I accidentally overwrote it by pressing "redakti" and not "respondi")

This is what both formats have going for and against them:
H264
+ Most widespread format
+ Better quality (on paper)
+ Well established in the market and protected by patents
+ Free to stream non-commercially. Thus, if you're going to build a video-site paid for by ad revenue with the format like Youtube, you must pay royalties where they are due
- Royalties are not a clear cut issue - streaming is free (originally until 2015 but now forever), but not legally bound, that is, MPEG LA has control.
- Most things needed to make H264 videos require £/$/¥ (however, there are free things like x264

WebM
+ Free, but I don't think it's impossible for Google/others to seize control if it wishes
- A bit less quality than H264 (on paper)
- Not widepsread, possibly late to the market
- Not protected by patents, and a possibility that it may infringe.
+ Name is less alien
+ free to stream, create, encode decode recode excode accode occode procode etc.
(also, WebM would be easier to get working with Firefox etc)

In the end, the differences are minimal, and revolve around minimal royalties (which presumably add up), legalities, and quality as a minor issue. I don't think Microsoft is well on target in calling WebM Esperanto anyway. Google in this case is not being very open or promoting freedom on the web, uncharacteristically. Perhaps a bureaucratic problem....

HOWEVER, for Mozilla, this is all problematic since H264 is most popular yet without Flash they may have trouble with the decoder side of things.

Miaj komentoj pri la afero:

- En Esperanto
- En la hispana