In addition to unveiling the Chrome Web Store at the Google I/O yesterday, Google also announced WebM, an open and royalty-free video format created especially for the web. The WebM format uses VP8 video codec and Vorbis for the audio and can be licensed for free as compared to H.264. Another advantage WebM possesses is the use of VP8 codec that will bring great savings in bandwidth and lower the cost of encoding.
WebM is currently supported by 40 companies however, two big names missing from the list are Intel and Apple.
Users will need to download supported browsers to take advantage of the new video format. Opera’s beta and Firefox’s nightly build is currently available with WebM support.
For other platforms, Google is said to be working with other partners.
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