Last week’s Google I/O conference was really impressive, if you are a developer using Google Tools that is.  They announced a bunch of new features in Android 2.2.  Not the least of these, and the one I am most excited for, Tethering on all android devices for free and out of the box.  They released Google TV, which is there attempt to bring searching for video’s on the internet on your TV to my Mom and Grandma.  So Google has proven that they aren’t evil when they keep all of our search data for ever.  They actually use it to figure out what it is that we all really want and need right?

They certainly seem to.  Google’s biggest and most reverberating announcement of the week is the open sourcing of their recently purchased Video Codec.  They have packaged it into what they are calling WebM.  The VP8 codec isn’t really the best of bread but it does seem to be the one with the least amount of problems with patents.  This is really yet to be seen.  Google has the money to take on anyone who wants to try and stop them.  The long term fear about Video Patents, as I have heard on just about every podcast and website lately, is that you will get sued for something you never would have thought was patented.  This is the excuse many companies have used not to adopt OGG Theora.  HTML 5 needs a standard for video and Google is doing everything they can to make VP8 that standard.

If adopted this would open a flood gate for companies of all sizes to do more online demos of products and services.  in theory you would be able to create one website for all platforms and have the video show up in different sizes with nearly no effort and only the hosting cost on your part.  I can see all of the future internet infomercial stars getting ready to sell us all great stuff.  Combine this with Google TV and I can finally kick caffeine to the curb and actually sleep at night because I will have the ability to look them up whenever I want. There will no longer be a worry of missing the latest must have gadgets that are sweeping the nation.

I would link to a story or two but there are so many good ones I think it’s better to just search for “google webm” or “google vp8”