WebM is an open-source alternative to other video formats (especially to MP4) and is specifically intended for Internet use in combination with HTML5. WEBM files are WEBM Video files commonly used for delivering online videos through the use of the HTML5 "video" tag. The WEBM container format is based on the Matroska container that stores video in .MKV. The video file stores video compressed with VP8 technology and audio compressed with Ogg Vorbis compression. The WEBM format is an alternative to the h.264 and MPEG-4 standards. WEBM is developed as a high-quality open format by The WebM Project.
WebM has since become a political issue within the online community. While Google is making every effort to establish the audio/video format, other major market participants such as Apple or Microsoft continue to use formats such as MP4. The main reason for this are the patent laws: both of these software companies are part of the MPEG-LA patent pool, as they hold patents for the codecs used and receive license fees for them. Google is attempting to get around these patents by using WebM.
