The Google IO conference began today, and several announcements were made this morning.
- Google has open-sourced VP8 video codec and rolled it into a projected called WebM. This change will help browsers finally standardize on an open video format to replace Flash video on the web.
- Google Wave is now available to everyone, including Google Apps users. Remember Google Wave? Our latest thinking is that it pretty much sucks. Hopefully opening it up to everyone will give them enough feedback to make it useful.
- Google Chrome Web Store is a place for marketing and obtaining standards-based web applications. Now there is a centralized location to access some cutting-edge web apps that show off the new and excited features of modern web standards.
It’s clear that Google is fully behind an open web. Google promised more announcements for tomorrow’s keynote, beginning at 8:30am PDT, which will be streamed at youtube.com/GoogleDevelopers. Tune in!
By ricky 20 May 2010 - 10:44 am
I'm excited about WebM. I know a lot of people were giving Mozilla a hard time about not paying the H.264 license. I guess they new what they were doing. But I've heard that VP8 might have some patent issues. Do you know anything about that, Aaron?
By Aaron Traffas 10 June 2010 - 11:24 am
There are some rumors about VP8 being encumbered by possible licensing restrictions, but from what I've heard, Google is confident that it isn't. Firefox just included WebM in nightly builds, so it seems everyone is pretty sure it's going to stand on its own.
By Aaron Traffas 10 June 2010 - 4:24 pm
There are some rumors about VP8 being encumbered by possible licensing restrictions, but from what I've heard, Google is confident that it isn't. Firefox just included WebM in nightly builds, so it seems everyone is pretty sure it's going to stand on its own.