Google could spend VP8 codec, new of On2 Technologies, open source. This is the second codec from the firm that would be available to the community after the VP3, which was the basis of Theora codec. VP8 is a good competitor to H.264, which delivers performance roughly equal. Remember qu'On2 technology generally dismisses its codec’s with other companies and Adobe, before using the H.264 video in Flash, using the VP6.

The main problem is obviously VP8 hardware support. While H.264 is free but very well supported by PC graphics cards and SoC smart phones, while VP8 do with the processor decodes. Still, if Google opens the VP8, Firefox could benefit from a modern and efficient codec, the current choice for video in HTML5 Theora being that - if it is open source - is less efficient than its competitors. It remains to see the license used by Google and especially if the developers of browsers and sites dedicated to the video below.

For the moment, Safari, Internet Explorer 9 and Chrome use H.264, as well as YouTube and Vimeo, while Firefox, Opera and Chrome (a) use Theora, that can be found at Wikipedia or at Dailymotion.