Adobe Announces Flash Player Support For Google’s VP8 Video Codec

No surprise here, Adobe has taken the stage at Google's I/O conference to announce that their Flash player will include VP8 codec support. Smart move on Adobe's part as now the Flash player supports video encoded in both H.264 and VP8. While many have been quick to say that H.264 will dominate the web for video content, with Google's announcement today, that's no longer clear. 

Apple is pushing H.264, Google is backing VP8. Things are going to get really interesting as the battle between H.264 and VP8 begins. I find it funny that for the last 15 years, almost no one outside of the industry even knew what a video codec was. Now all of a sudden, it seems everyone is learning what codes are, how they work and which ones should be used depending on the device that video is being played back on.

Google's announcement today has a lot of implications on the video industry and the real story, to me at least, it not about video codecs. It's bigger than that. For Google, I think this all ties back to advertising, which I'll explain in further details later on today.