While Mozilla was busy releasing Firefox 3.6, YouTube was launching a HTML5 version of its video player, eliminating the need for Adobe Flash. While Firefox supports a HTML5 video player, the video format that Firefox uses (Theora), is different to the one Google uses (H.264).

As part of HTML5, a new set of standards being slowly implemented in all major browsers (Internet Explorer will get there eventually- I hope) a new option exists to play video within the browser and to control and manipulate it through JavaScript. This beats the current method of either using Adobe Flash or Silverlight, two proprietary plugins that have been known to slow even the fastest computers down to a grinding halt. There are two prevailing formats currently competing with each other. Firefox uses the free and open source OGG Theora format, while Google and Apple use H.264 – A very common format that can be decoded /encoded at a hardware level.

Much the same as the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray wars, the winning format will come down to a single player – Internet Explorer. Before I explain why, I think it’s important to explain why Firefox and Google went down separate paths.

On one side of the corner we have Webkit, the rendering engine currently used by Google Chrome and Safari. Webkit was originally developed by Apple as a fork of KHTML (found in Linux) and as per the GNU, required to open source it. Apple has always been a big supporter of H.264, with its first appearance in the Tiger version of QuickTime. H.264 can be found in the iPhone, Apple TV and most recently Webkit, as the preferred method of HTML5 video playback.

Apple is also responsible for YouTube’s conversion to H.264 back in 2007. In order for their videos to work on the Apple TV and the iPhone, YouTube had to re-encode their entire library to H.264. Google, being good partners with Apple (at the time) agreed, and soon had their entire library converted.

The reason why Google chose Webkit (as opposed to Firefox’s Gecko) when building Chrome is stated in this interview:

It turned out to be a perfect decision for Google. It allowed them to keep H.264 as its preferred video format on YouTube along with keeping support for Apple TV and the iPhone. Visit YouTube today in Chrome or Safari, enable the HTML5 experiment and for non-monetised videos you’ll see a neat new player that’s completely flash free.

Do the same in Firefox and you’ll be forever staring at a blank screen. That’s because its rendering engine, Gecko supports the Theora format instead of H.264. Mozilla chose Theora as it is an open source format, free of any licensing terms while MPEG LA (creates of the H.264 format) require licensing fees. Apple must have already paid these fees in order for them to be used in Quicktime, so it made sense for them to continue using it. This puts Mozilla in a tight corner with the largest video site on the internet encoding all of its videos in a competing format.

Now enter in Internet Explorer. Currently, it doesn’t support either of these formats (and I find it very unlikely that they will). Have a look at the following market shares, with statistics being taken off the December 2009 averages of statowl.com and w3schools.com (as both sites show very different details):

Based on this graph, I’m assuming that all people are using the latest version of their respective browser (which I know is inaccurate). This means that Webkit (and as an extension, H.264) has a combined market share of 12.83%, which is still nothing compared to Firefox’s (and Theora’s) 33.61%.

All three of those browsers combined still stand short of Internet Explorers 51.67%, and each one of those users still require flash for their video playback. The success of either Theora or H.264 possibly depends on Internet Explorer and whether or not pigs fly.

If Internet Explorer chooses to announce support for H.264 tomorrow in Internet Explorer 9, you can almost be assured that support for it in Firefox will come shortly. Should the Internet Explorer team chooses to support Theora in their next release, things get even more interesting.

Considering Google’s souring relationship with Apple and its views on open source software, it seems plausible that they drop support for H.264 in favour for Theora, although very unlikely. Should they remain loyal to H.264, one of two things will happen. The first is that YouTube will lose its internet dominance in favour of a Microsoft based Theora video hosting site (and this would make sense if it was backing the opposite technology). The second is that Google will become much more aggressive in promoting Chrome and may even try to get the H.264 format opened up (or at the least pay the licenses for Mozilla), letting Firefox move to it for free.

Personally, I think Microsoft will opt to side with Mozilla and chose to support Theora. This will allow them to launch a Theora based video hosting site to directly compete with Youtube. Throw in a bit of money to lure sites over to it (Netflix, Hulu…) and they’re setting themselves up to compete nicely with Google, but whichever way it turns out things are going to really heat up in the world of online video.