Google made two major announcements at the I/O conference today.
WebM
Google announced the launch of The WebM Project, which is a new open-source video file format. WebM is based on V8,
a file format from video format company On2 Technologies, which was acquired by Google earlier this year.
As expected, WebM will be integrated into the Chrome browser and YouTube. However, unexpected, Mozilla and Opera have both said that they will be adding support for the new video format into their web browsers, as well. It is still unknown whether Apple will be integrating WebM support into Safari, however, it does seem likely due to the possibilities.
Android software coming to television sets and home entertainment equipment
Bloomberg is reporting that Google has teamed up with Intel to bring Android software to TV sets and other home entertainment equipment, seeking a market position in the fast-growing TV industry.
"This is a new frontier for Google," said Ray Valdes, an analyst at Gartner Inc. "It's a return to traditional mass media concepts."
To attract consumers, Google will need to provide a broad variety of easily searchable programming and let viewers chat or post comments about it online, on a single screen, Valdes said.
It's not yet known when the integration with TV sets will actually take place, but it would obviously require an Internet-connected television.
It also seems likely Google entered this industry due to the fact that Apple currently sells the Apple TV, a similar concept that allows customers to watch movies and play music instantly from their TV.
[...] on their Windows PC, Mac OS X computer, or Linux machine.Firefox 4 also adds support for the new WebM media format introduced by Google earlier this year.Important Note: Keep in mind that this is a beta and may not [...]
[...] transfers and lower network burden if Google can convince people to adopt WebP.WebP is derived from WebM, another open-source technology developed by Google which is for videos. WebP is also [...]