What if Microsoft was Really Serious about WebRTC

IE11 would have some WebRTC implementation already.

Do you know that MailChimp already uses WebRTC? I recently opened there an account to manage my email subscription on research I do. Once I did, I took the time to fill in my profile – a bad habit I had. MailChimp gave me the option of taking my photo for the profile – and that invoked the getUserMedia API of WebRTC in order to access the camera and capture the image. No Flash. No plugin. Just pure HTML5.

It was a wow moment to me. It is that kind of a time when you see how the banal aspects of WebRTC can assist in areas that you don't really care about. I am a video conferencing person, so it is easy to forget such details as camera capture and what you can do with that thing alone.

Then I started thinking. Why isn't this supported by all browsers?

How much would it hurt Microsoft or Apple to admit that acquisition of camera feed can be important and relevant in itself? It poses no real threat to Lync or Skype or FaceTime. It just gives one more capability to those implementing their service.

If either Microsoft or Apple were serious about WebRTC, then they would have implemented that simple capability and pushed it to market already. Nothing to it. A show of faith. An indication that they really want this.

When both of them just whine about VP8 and suggest H.264 instead, and Microsoft just trying to find an SDP alternative – it looks like delaying the standard. If they would have done that alongside taking such a position, then I'd be more willing to take them seriously as well.

Microsoft – give me a show of faith. There are useful parts to WebRTC that aren't just video. Figure out which parts of it you're comfortable with and go implement it.