Microsoft releases Chrome extension to support H.264 video

Microsoft has hit out at Google over its decision to drop support for the H.264 video format by making available a Chrome extension compatible with the format.

The Windows Media Player HTML5 Extension for Chrome will allow anyone using Chrome on Windows 7 to play H.264 video.

A blog post written by Claudio Caldato of Microsoft's Interoperability Strategy Team, says, "At Microsoft, we respect that Windows customers want the best experience of the web including the ability to enjoy the widest range of content available on the Internet in H.264 format."

Classy

The same subtle digs at Google pervade throughout the post, which concludes saying by praising H.264 as "an excellent and widely-used video format that serves the web very well today."

The head of Internet Explorer, Dean Hachamovitch, also commented, "Our support for H.264 results from our views about a robust web and video ecosystem that provides a rich level of functionality, is the product of an open standards process like the W3C's HTML5 specification, and has been free from legal attacks.

"Microsoft is agnostic and impartial about the actual underlying video format for HTML5 video as long as this freedom continues."

Earlier this week we reported on another scrap between the two companies when Google claimed that Microsoft-owned search engine Bing was copying Google search results.

The Google V Microsoft spat is certainly hotting up - and the gloves are coming off.

Via AllThingsD