It's not often you see some of the tech world's biggest names working together, but that's exactly what happened today.

Silicon Valley heavyweights Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Intel, Cisco, and Netflix have come together to form a new open source collective known as the Alliance for Open Media. The group's goal is to create the Internet's next standard for video playback formats, codecs, and the like. The description on their newly launched website reads:

'The Alliance for Open Media is founded by leading Internet companies focused on developing next-generation media formats, codecs and technologies in the public interest.  The new Alliance is committing its collective technology and expertise to meet growing Internet demand for top-quality video, audio, imagery and streaming across devices of all kinds and for users worldwide.'

A post on the site reveals the Alliance's initial plans for a 'next-generation' royalty free video format. The criteria they have set for the project are:

• Interoperable and open;
• Optimized for the web;
• Scalable to any modern device at any bandwidth;
• Designed with a low computational footprint and optimized for hardware;
• Capable of consistent, highest-quality, real-time video delivery; and
• Flexible for both commercial and non-commercial content, including user-generated content.

The group's members have already dabbled in such technologies in the past. Mozilla and Cisco both have royalty free codec projects named Daala and Thor respectively. Google also has a similar initiative in the works.

"Customer expectations for media delivery continue to grow, and fulfilling their expectations requires the concerted energy of the entire ecosystem," said Gabe Frost, the Alliance for Open Media's executive director.

"The Alliance for Open Media brings together the leading experts in the entire video stack to work together in pursuit of open, royalty-free and interoperable solutions for the next generation of video delivery," he added.