Why Did Google Open Source WebRTC?

Here's tough question – what was the reason behind Google's work in WebRTC?

This is something I planned writing about a few weeks ago, but now this seems like the perfect timing for it.

1. Google reached a settlement on patents with MPEG-LA
2. Nokia is taking HTC to court over VP8 patent infringement
3. The codec wars in IETF are far from over

Google has poured a ton of money and resources into making WebRTC a reality. Chris Koehncke starts his latest post with this great paragraph:

I have to applaud Google's near dictator like attitude about WebRTC. It will work as long as they are deciding to the better of the overall community. Helpful is that daddy Google has left their check book on the counter and seem willing to spend big $$$ to make problems go away. We should all take advantage of this free ride while it lasts.

The alarming part of it is the last one: "while it lasts" So it begs the question – will Google one day, a few years from now, put the axe on WebRTC as it is now doing to their beloved Google Reader? WebRTC without a sponsor in 2013 and most probably in 2014 as well is doomed. WebRTC with Google as its avid sponsor has a chance at success. There are those who would say the whole deal here is of Google wanting to push more ads at people and video calls are suitable for that one. I think it is more than that. Google is the behemoth of the internet. It has grown with it, and in some ways even defined it. Google wants to build the operating system of the platform, and it is doing it on the web. They invested in Mozilla and Firefox for a time to get there. And then introduced the Chrome browser and later the Chrome OS. The browser is the new OS. The only thing missing was to remove those pesky phone apps from our desktop and putting them inside the browser. After technologies like WebGL, NaCl and browser based push notification, WebRTC was the only thing missing to take the browser to the next level.