Looks like they almost got it right earlier this week: Google was cooking with video encoding, but it looks like it turned out to be digital-rights-management. I have no particular problem with Window$ Media DRM (besides it only applying to WMV of course ;-)), but any competition is great and hopefully Google will open it to the developer community as much as they have with other projects.

At this point, we might as well give in; one day Google will index every aspect of our lives…except the way I wear my hat. No, no…they can’t take that away from me…

Om Malik on Broadband : Yet Another DRM? The Google DRM

Google has developed its own digital-rights-management software to protect downloaded videos from piracy.