Google buys On2 for $106.5 Millons Dollars

On2 Technologies, a leading video compression company helps power some of the Internet's biggest players, such as Skype, AOL, Sony and Adobe's Flash Video plugin to name but a few. With a $106.5 million dollar acquisition, Google will be including On2 into their ever growing family of products. Many major companies rely on their technology to power video on web, mobile, TV and gaming platforms.

The future of Internet video has been a big talking point recently, triggered mainly by the launch of Apple's iPad last month, which does not support Adobe's Flash player. This is casting a shadow over the future of Flash video, which powers a majority of video online. Google and Apple have a strong partnership and both companies are pushing for adoption of the new HTML 5 web standard, a standard that uses it's own built in video support powered by H.264 video compression. 

A good example of the move away from Flash video is You Tube, another Google company, which has been rolling out an HTML5 version of the site without flash. Combining this with Google's Chrome OS, which will be heavily reliant on HTML 5, it will be interesting to see how Google will approach On2's technology in Adobe's Flash player in the future.