Following Chrome, Firefox browser Firefox will remove support for Theora video codec

CTOnews.com Following Google's plan to remove Theora codec format support from Chrome / Chromium, Mozilla plans to take a similar move to eliminate Theora from Firefox.

CTOnews.com has learned that Theora is a free, open lossy video compression format developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The video codec was released to the public on November 3, 2008, primarily for online video and audio purposes.

According to a recent Mozilla survey, only about 0.09% of the media load in Firefox is Theora content, and most web services have long since switched from Theora to better alternatives such as VP9 and AV1 codecs. So, very few legacy services or other video sources require Theora.

Mozilla's plan is to test disabling Theora in nightly versions of Firefox, add a bit of telemetry to track demand if any Theora load attempts occur, and wait a few Firefox release cycles before removing it in beta, and then remove Theora support from Firefox in a manner similar to Chrome.

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Low usage, Google announces it will remove Theora video codec support from desktop Chrome