VP9 is an open and royalty-free video coding format developed by Google.
VP9 is the successor to VP8 and competes mainly with MPEG's High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC/[H.265](H.265.md)). At first, VP9 was mainly used on Google's video platform YouTube. The emergence of the Alliance for Open Media, and its support for the ongoing development of the successor [AV1](AV1.md), of which Google is a part, led to growing interest in the format.