The future of Skype-like communications on the Web appears more secure with reconciliation in a standards debate that pitted Microsoft against Google and Mozilla.
On Tuesday, authors of a Web technology called Object Real-Time Communications (ORTC) published a draft of their specification they believe to be mature enough to be built into browsers. Microsoft has long been an ORTC fan, so its support is no surprise. But Google, which backed a rival technology called WebRTC, is also an ORTC co-author that helped create the new technology.
Microsoft announced the new ORTC draft Tuesday. Google and Mozilla declined to comment, but at the Google I/O developer show in June, Chrome team member Justin Uberti said he sees an ORTC-infused WebRTC essentially as WebRTC 1.1.
"Is this going to be a schism between the two churches of WebRTC?" he asked. "I wanted to head that off. ORTC will be integrated into WebRTC 1.1. Your existing code is going to keep on working...It's the best of both worlds."
Unifying two competing standards may sound like something only programmers care about. But for regular people, it hastens the day that they'll be able to use their browsers to set up a video or audio chat link by, for example, clicking on a name in a contact list.
That makes Internet-based communications easier without jumping through software installation hoops or making sure something like Microsoft's Skype or Apple's Facetime is installed. And with Microsoft on board, it means more browsers and devices will be able to communicate than just those running Chrome or Firefox.
