Google's Internet Video Gambit: Supporting Everything Really Means Supporting Nothing
As the current Web video standards war rages on, Google (GOOG) is hard pressed to find solid ground. Trying to support what everyone wants leaves it not really supporting much of anything.
Google wants to be compatible with all users who use the Web, and that's understandable. The more people who can turn to the company for information -- whether search, news, or video entertainment â€" the more it collects in ads and all-important user data. According to Alexa.com, Google's video site YouTube.com ranks third in traffic in the world and fourth in the U.S. It not only wants its material to be compatible, but it must ensure compatibility for its underlying business strategy.
However, Google's approach to support all possibilities is a long-term mistake. It's not surprising that Google wants to be all things to all video users if you look at the distracted nature of the company's product strategy. As I wrote in March:
Google is the poster-child for companies with an engineering culture. Nothing wrong with engineering, but when you often let the engineers go off and do what they want, you can wind up with an incoherent product strategy and marketing disaster. And you get in trouble when the engineering culture sells features and forgets that people need a compelling reason to buy what you offer.Google has too much money and too little discipline for its own good. Engineers go hither, thither, and yon, developing products that overlap or even compete with each other. You could call it an homage to Darwinian selection, only success under the laws of evolution isn't guaranteed and typically takes eons.
Google shows signs of the same "do it all" approach with video:
- YouTube has an "opt-in experiment" for HTML 5 support.
- Google's Chrome browser has native support for H.264.
- Google has announced that it will integrate Adobe (ADBE) Flash into its browser.
- The company, in conjunction with browser makers Opera and the Mozilla Foundation, has also announced a royalty-free, open source video format called WebM.
Unfortunately, as free and open software expert and activist Florian Mueller notes, there is no guarantee that WebM will be free of interference from existing video software patents. As Mueller wrote me yesterday:
I believe the proponents of standardization on the basis of Theora [another open and royalty-free form of video software] would have to make at least some reasonable effort to counter the claims made by Steve Jobs and others that there's uncertainty concerning the potential infringement of patents by Theora. If major players such as Google, a commercial browser maker such as Opera and a well-funded non-profit such as the Mozilla Foundation want to convince the skeptics, I believe they have to make reasonable best efforts to demonstrate that their technology is safe from a patent point of view. At least they should look at the patents held by MPEG LA [the industry group that administers licensing for H.264 and other popular video standards] and perform a well-reasoned and well-documented patent clearance with respect to those.I understand the desire for an alternative to H.264. Eventually, video content distributors will find that they have to pay for its use, which could have a negative impact on making information available. From pure self-interest, Google wants more content, not less, even if it doesn't host the material. After all, 96 percent of its income is ad-related, and a growing amount comes from video.
However, the WebM solution will likely face the same problems as other open video solutions. Handset maker HTC has already learned that if sued for patent infringement by Apple over Android smartphones, Google won't necessarily step in to offer support. Opera and Mozilla might find the same thing to be true, and it probably won't matter to Google, which already has an H.264 license.
Unless Google takes a stronger approach to ensuring the availability of WebM, maybe by using a tiny portion of its banked billions to ensure free use, WebM becomes another distraction -- one that could cost companies that rely on it. Maybe it's time for Google to act like the large corporation it is and make use of its heft in the video industry. As owner of YouTube, it could help set the direction for the industry by setting a clear direction. But so long as it tries to be all things to all people, the future of Internet video will continue to thrash.
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