Internet Explorer 9 HTML5 video will only support H.264; swivel on it, Ogg and Adobe

In a bold, blunt and brash announcement that must surely be intended to up-stage Steve Jobs' open letter to Adobe, the IE9 development team has stated that their new browser will only support H.264. This heralds the death of Ogg's Theora codec -- but OSnews says it better than I ever could.

It also comes hot on the heels of news that Google's VP8 codec will be open-sourced... though I dare not predict whether IE9 or Google has more clout in the upcoming HTML5 video war.

If such sad news wasn't big enough, Microsoft (or the IE Blog team) also finishes their blog post with a pot-shot at Adobe. "Flash does have some issues, particularly around reliability, security, and performance." In other words, the IE9 team consider Flash to be the gimp -- the gammy leg -- when it comes to crafting a smooth, rich, HTML5 Web. What's next? Coffee at a sidewalk cafe with Steve Jobs?

For those wondering, Microsoft cites a bunch of weird and unreal reasons for its adoption of H.264 over other HTML5 video codecs. They mention intellectual property rights, open source... but... they don't mention that Microsoft has a stake in H.264, or that its 'freeness' will terminate in 2016. While this will definitely make the Web a lot smoother for the end user, Microsoft will gain a huge amount of control in the process.

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