Google’s Vision for Hangouts: VP9, WebRTC and More
Author: Jim Lundy
Date: October 8, 2013
Topic: Collaboration
Research Note Number: 2013-39
Issue: What trends are impacting collaboration in the enterprise?
Summary: Google+ Hangouts is a consumer-level video service that Google has switched from supporting H.264 to the VP8 codec and eventually to VP9 and WebRTC. Google has also ended support for XMPP in the new Hangouts, which will impact enterprise developers and collaboration practitioners.
Google’s recent announcements in the past few months about Hangouts, denotes a vision of a unified communications and collaboration platform that will be a central piece of its collaboration portfolio. Google finds itself in a heated battle with Microsoft for the enterprise user’s eyeballs in each of their respective office productivity suites, including email. However, Real-time communications is the one area Google has been weaker in, compared to Microsoft in the enterprise. This research note focuses on the impact to enterprises of Google’s announcement with Vidyo on the VP9 codec and WebRTC for Hangouts, along with Google ending support of XMPP in Hangouts.