The future of Flash – Google Acquires On2
By Dean • Feb 23rd, 2010 • Category: Industry News
- Photo: Google
Google has just acquired On2 Technologies, a video compression technology company, for $124.6 million. Google intends to use the company’s technology, which is used in mobile devices, Skype, Flash player and other applications, to further improve its online video compression and video quality.
The YouTube plug
- Photo: YouTube
Essentially, Google plan on using the technology and engineering talent it just acquired to make YouTube’s video technology even better. This is remarkable because YouTube is arguably the most stable, fastest loading online video service, yet Google intends on taking this even further. While this is good news for Google, of course, it may not be good news for Adobe and their Flash platform.
Apple and Google allies once more?
- Photo: Apple
Flash Player, the dominant video playback platform on the Internet, owes its ubiquity to YouTube, the Internet’s largest online video sharing site. Why? Well, other developers build their tech around YouTube and follow that company’s lead, so as advancements are made in online video services, the rest follow the leader. Now that Google owns the tech that, in large part, powers Flash itself, the company has the option of abandoning the platform altogether. This, one will note, would be akin to what Apple did when they dropped Flash from their iPad. If Apple’s proclamation that Flash is a dying platform has any truth, Google could go a long way to cementing this. On the other hand, some believe that Google intends on saving the platform, not killing it.
What will Google do with Flash?
While others have debated what Google intends to do to Flash now that it owns On2, the real result here is that YouTube will get better, and faster, with even more video compression without sacrificing quality. The overall implications for Internet bandwidth usage alone should lead to celebration.
Tags for this article: online video
