With clients ranging from Adobe, Skype, Nokia, Infineon, Sun Microsystems, Mediatek, Sony, Brightcove, and Move Networks, On2 is probably the most successful and most popular video compression technology company. This is perhaps the reason why many big companies are after it. One of which is web giant Google, who recently went on an agreement with On2 to acquire the company.
The acquisition of On2 cost Google $106.5 million. On2 is popular for its codec designs such as VP3, VP4, VP5, TrueMotion VP6, TrueMotion VP7 and VP8. On2 makes codecs and video compression products for desktop / mobile applications as well as in certain devices.
With Google now officially the control tower of On2, many are expecting that the technologies from the company will be use to empower more YouTube. This will be done by increasing the video quality of videos uploaded in YouTube at the same time it will also make video loading faster.
It is expected that a lot of innovations will be created with the acquisition of On2 by Google. Smart choice for Google to acquire such useful company.
Google, known for its open source applications and the mantra of free-for-all usage, may change a lot in the online world if ever they decide to open source the VP7 and VP8 video codecs of On2. If this will happen, it can become an alternative to the licensed H264 codecs. According to On2, their VP7 has a better quality than the H264 codec even though they run at same bitrate. Also, they can use the VP8 if ever they decide to run YouTube in HTML5 mode.
More details of the acquisition will come soon and we expect to hear more of the plans Google intends to do with On2. If they will immediately apply the On2 technologies on YouTube is still a question that needs to be answered.
