Google senior software engineer and Chrome developer Dale Curtis posted in Google Groups that due to some new security risks, the desktop version of the Chrome browser plans to phase out and remove support for the Theora video codec. "Theora has low usage (and is still buggy) and no longer requires support for most users."
- Zero-day attacks targeting media codecs surge.
- Usage of UKM has dropped below measurable levels.
- Before the usage dropped, the Chrome team manually checked a number of sites and found that they were all incorrectly selecting Theora instead of more modern codecs like VP9.
- Theora has never been supported in Safari or Chrome on Android.
Dale Curtis stated that they will provide ogv.js polyfill for websites that still require Theora support and will not remove support for the ogg container. The plan is to gradually start the upgrade experiment, first removing support for Theora on M120. During this period, users who need it can reactivate Theora support through chrome://flags/#theora-video-codec.
The tentative timetable is:
- ~Start 50/50 canary development experiment on October 23, 2023.
- ~November 1-6, 2023: Begin 50/50 beta experiment.
- ~December 6, 2023: Start 1% stable experiment.
- ~January 8, 2024: Start 50% stable experiment.
- ~January 16, 2024: Launch at 100%.
- ~February 2024: Removed code and chrome://flag in M123.
- ~March 2024: Chrome 123 will be upgraded to stable version.
Theora is a free, open lossy video compression format developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation . Can be used to distribute movies and videos online and on disc without licensing and royalty fees or the vendor lock-in associated with other formats.
Theora was fully publicly released on November 3, 2008, and the bitstream format was frozen on July 1, 2004. Theora's predecessor is On2 TrueMotion VP3, a patented video codec developed by On2 Technologies.