Google quietly announced yesterday that it was buying On2 Technologies. For $106.5 million dollars, Google gets On2, a leading developer of video compression, publishing and encoding technology. Could Google be getting poised to jump into Internet TV?
According to the Google press release, Sundar Pichai, Google’s VP of Product Management, did the deal because, “Today video is an essential part of the web experience, and we believe high-quality video compression technology should be a part of the web platform. We are committed to innovation in video quality on the web, and we believe that On2’s team and technology will help us further that goal.”
Jeremy Doig, Google’s Engineering Director for Video, and Mike Jazayeri, Group Product Manager, added a little more in the Official Google Blog. Google bought On2, they wrote, “Because we spend a lot of time working to make the overall web experience better for users, we think that video compression technology should be a part of the web platform.”
Well, that’s not too surprising since Google owns everyone’s favorite short video site, YouTube, but is that all there is to it? Just enabling YouTube viewers to get higher-quality videos faster? Seth Weintraub at ComputerWorld speculates that’s that part of it. After all, when you’re delivering gigabytes per minute of video anything that makes HD Flash and H.264 video smaller, and thus puts less wear and tear on your servers and network is a good thing.
Weintraub also points out that Hulu, perhaps the most popular of the VoD (Video on Demand) sites, relies on On2’s video technologies to deliver its videos. He thinks that Google is angling for some of Hulu’s advertising dollars.
I’ve another theory. Why deal with Hulu, when Google could cut out the middle man and offer its own VoD service? Google already has its Google Video and YouTube servers. Now it has On2’s tried and true video delivery technology. Why not Google VoD?
While Hulu is the most popular of the VoD services, there is no dominant VoD service. I can see room for another VoD service, and Google is more than big enough that if they came knocking on a studio’s door, you know the studio would at least once to hear their proposal out.
What do you think? Will we see plans for Google VoD announced by year’s end?
[...] Is Google getting into the Internet TV biz? Google quietly announced yesterday that it was buying On2 Technologies. For $106.5 million dollars, Google gets On2, a leading developer of video compression, publishing and encoding technology. Could Google be getting poised to jump into Internet TV? [...]