WebRTC is a platform giving browsers, mobile apps, and desktop apps real-time communication capabilities, typically used for video calling. The platform consists of a comprehensive set of technologies and standards. Google initiated the idea to create WebRTC in 2009, as an alternative to Adobe Flash and desktop applications that couldn’t run in the browser. The previous generation of browser-based products were built on top of licensed proprietary technology. Various products were built with this technology, including Hangouts. Google then acquired the companies it had been licensing the technology from and made it available as the open source WebRTC project. This codebase is integrated in Chrome and used by the majority of applications using WebRTC. Together with other browser vendors and industry leaders such as Mozilla, Microsoft, Cisco, and Ericsson, the standardization of WebRTC was kicked off in both the W3C and IETF. In 2013, Mozilla and Google demonstrated video calling between their browsers. Through the evolution of the standard, many architectural discussions had led to implementation differences across browsers and challenged compatibility and interoperability. Most of these disagreements were ultimately settled as the standard became finalized in the past years. The WebRTC specification is now accompanied with a full set of platform tests and tools to address compatibility and browsers have largely adapted their implementations accordingly. This brings an end to a challenging period where web developers had to continuously adopt their services to different browser implementations and specification changes.
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