Not long ago, Microsoft and Google were trading insults over HTML5 video. Microsoft was backing the H.264 video codec over Google's new WebM technology.
The vendors are still sticking by their preferred codecs, but they've apparently made amends and are cooperating in bringing WebM to Internet Explorer 9, the latest version of what is still the world's most widely used Web browser.
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WebM software engineer Matthew Heaney writes "Today we're making available a preview release of Microsoft Media Foundation (MF) components for WebM," and goes on to lavish praise on both Microsoft Media Foundation and Microsoft itself.
"Microsoft Media Foundation is a powerful and flexible API that allowed us to seamlessly integrate WebM with Windows, providing a great HTML5 user experience in IE9," Heaney writes. "Microsoft collaborated closely with us to make the components fully compatible with HTML5 in IE9, so features such as the <video> tag and its canPlayType method are fully enabled for WebM. Our thanks go out to the Microsoft engineers who provided technical assistance and hosted our team in Redmond last month."
Heaney's LinkedIn profile lists his current employer as On2 Technologies, which was acquired by Google. The WebM project is supported by Google along with Mozilla, Opera and Adobe.
Over on Microsoft's official Internet Explorer blog, vice president Dean Hachamovitch says "Today IE9 can play HTML5 video in both the industry-standard H.264 format and the newer WebM format."
While Google has moved to rid Chrome of H.264, arguing that it is too restrictive, especially in terms of licensing fees, Hachamovitch says "IE9 is the only browser today committed to supporting both formats [H.264 and WebM] directly."
While Microsoft officials have toned the rhetoric down somewhat, Hachamovitch still asks "When and how does Google genuinely make room for the Open Web Standards community to engage?"
Although Google doesn't directly support H.264, Microsoft has released a video-player extension on Chrome to offer H.264 capabilities.
So the war over HTML5 video standards may not be over, but at least users of IE9 and Chrome shouldn't be affected too much.
