Despite Potential Legal Threats, YouTube Goes 'All In' With WebM
Google will now encode all new YouTube videos in the WebM format, but will still support H.264, too.
There's a New Firefox Beta In Town – And It Starts Up Faster Than Ever Before
Firefox 4 is running behind schedule, but today, Mozilla released the 9th beta version of its popular browser. This new version is mainly focused on improving speed and only features small interface enhancements. Thanks to a plethora of changes under the hood, Firefox now also starts significantly faster and complex animations will be smoother. Mozilla also notes that it has improved the bookmarks and history code, which should make bookmarking faster as well.
Google Tries to Clarify Why It's Dropping Support for H.264
Very few developments in the tech world this week got as much attention as Google’s announcement that it would slowly drop support for the H.264 video codec from its Chrome browser. Given how ubiquitous H.264 is – though it is also encumbered by patent and licensing issues – quite a few pundits shook their heads at this development. Today, Google published a more detailed explanation for this decision.
Google Plans to End H.264 Video Support From Chrome in Favor of Open Formats
Google just announced that it plans to fade out support for the widely used H.264 codec from its Chrome browser “in the next few months”. Instead, Google will favor the open Theora video codec and its own open WebM (VP8) codec.