Google may launch YouTube for Europe
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(InfoWorld) - Google is gathering some of its top executives in Paris next week for an international press conference, and speculation is rife that announcements will include a local version of YouTube for European countries. France 24, a French public TV channel, confirmed Friday that it has been in talks with Google, suggesting the search giant may be lining up local content for its video-sharing service. Google's YouTube events calendar pegs Tuesday -- the day of the press conference -- for an unspecified "Paris launch." A Google spokeswoman in France declined to comment on the France 24 talks or speculation about local versions of YouTube. YouTube is already popular in Europe despite having only an English language interface. Offering local language versions, along with more local TV content, could help it compete more effectively with homegrown alternatives, said Bob Ivins, managing director of comScore Europe. France's most popular video site is DailyMotion, according to figures from comScore, although YouTube is close behind. DailyMotion, which can be viewed in several languages, had 6.6 million unique visitors in April, compared to 5.8 million for YouTube, comScore said. In Germany, YouTube topped the rankings with 7.6 million visitors, only slightly ahead of Germany's MyVideo.de. Across Europe as a whole, YouTube has a strong lead, with 60.6 million visitors, followed by DailyMotion with 14.5 million. But the European market is fractured, with YouTube attracting only around a quarter of the total audience, comScore said. YouTube received a boost in France this week from a video that purported to show French President Nicolas Sarkozy drunk during a news conference at the G8 Summit last week. The video has been watched more than 2 million times, although the Belgian newscaster who suggested Sarkozy was drunk has now reportedly apologized. Cutting deals to use European TV programming would help Google avoid potential copyright infringement lawsuits and be consistent with its strategy to partner with media providers. Google said separately this week that it is testing new tools that will try to identify copyright content and prevent it from being uploaded to its sites. Among the attendees at next week's press day will be Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Marissa Mayer, vice president for search products and user experience, along with unnamed guests.
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Google Inc , the world's  largest Internet company, will propose at a meeting of European  policymakers in France on Friday that national regulators agree  on a basic set of global privacy protections.
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By Ryan Blitstein, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Jun. 20--YouTube has created local versions of its video-sharing site in nine countries, including France and the United Kingdom, the company said Tuesday.
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Google and BSkyB in a video-sharing deal? Oh, the irony.
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Internet search leader Google is eyeing acquisitions in Portugal that could help the US firm expand into Africa.
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Internet search leader Google Inc   is in talks to buy popular Web video site YouTube Inc.  for close to $1.6 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on  Friday, citing a person familiar with the matter.
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Internet search leader Google Inc. is in talks to acquire the popular online video site YouTube Inc. for about $1.6 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing a person familiar with the matter.
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Early investors in YouTube, the popular video-sharing Web site, are  poised for a big payday after the company's recent $1.65 billion acquisition  by Google Inc.
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Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c51881)  has announced the addition of Video Downloads in Europe - A Slowly  Emerging Market to their offering.
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Private, in these parts Analysis Like a trigger-happy tourist, Google has shot almost every street in five US cities and added its pics to what might be the world's biggest holiday album. But if Google ever starts shooting the streets of Europe, courts here could fight back.â¦
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Google Inc.'s YouTube has agreed to a breakthrough deal with major music label EMI Group Plc to give users of YouTube's video sharing site broad access to music videos by EMI artists.
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(InfoWorld) - Google Inc. is in discussions to acquire YouTube Inc. for about US$1.6 billion, although the deal is far from done and the talks could collapse, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing an unnamed source familiar with the matter. Google's reported interest in YouTube would reflect a sense of urgency on the part of the search engine giant to improve its position in the red-hot online video market. Google entered the market in early 2005, at about the same time YouTube was founded. But so far the success has gone to the scrappy startup, not Google. In September, YouTube nabbed almost 46 percent of all U.S. visits to video Web sites, while the video section of News Corp.'s MySpace.comÂ came in second with 21.2 percent, according to Hitwise Pty. Ltd. Google Video came in third with 11 percent, followed by Microsoft Corp.'s MSN Video with 6.8 percent and Yahoo Inc.'s Yahoo Video with 5.6 percent. YouTube, in typical startup fashion, approached the market aggressively, opening up their service to anyone wanting to upload their videos, and quickly became a phenomenon. It embraced tagging and sharing features, creating the most popular online video community. Meanwhile, Google took a much more conservative approach, at first only featuring videos obtained through formal agreements with professional production houses. Consequently, users had to pay to view many of the videos in the catalogue. Months later, it added an upload feature for regular users, but closely policed submissions. It wasn't until recently that it opened wide the service's door and added tagging and sharing capabilities. Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL LLC are also playing catch-up to YouTube, whose model these large Internet companies are adopting. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL need a strong position in this market, due to the increasing popularity of online video. Collectively, traffic to the top 10 video Web sites increased 164 percent between February and May of this year, according to Hitwise. As traffic to online video sites increases, so does the interest of advertisers, who in turn generate most of the revenue for Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL. For many years, online video remained an unfulfilled promise, hobbled by high broadband prices, inferior image quality and reluctance by TV networks and film companies to put their shows and movies on the Web. However, in the past 18 months, video on the Web has gained momentum, helped by a critical mass of users with broadband access, improved quality and a willingness by production companies to distribute their films and programs online. Neither Google nor YouTube immediately responded to requests for comment.
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YouTube, the video social-networking website owned by Google, is building a vast network of content providers, a company spokesman told AFP.
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The BBC has signed a major  deal with Google to launch three branded channels on YouTube.
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Does Google want to be the 51st state this election season? It sure looks that way. The Mountain View search-engine giant and its wildly popular video-sharing site, YouTube, can't be missed if you want to be president.
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(InfoWorld) - In the third content deal in as many days, Vodafone Group announced a service that will allow its mobile customers to view and upload videos to YouTube. The announcement follows others this week from Vodafone withÂ MySpace.comÂ and eBay. The deals point to a growing interest from online content providers to offer their services to mobile customers as well as continued efforts by operators to drive usage of their wireless data networks. The mobile YouTube service will launch initially in the U.K. where customers will be able to view select videos, forward links of videos and upload and search for videos. Vodafone plans to launch the service in other European markets as well. YouTube has a similar offering in the U.S. where customers of Cingular Wireless, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA, and Verizon Wireless can all upload videos from their phones. On Thursday, Vodafone said it will be the first to launch a new mobile service from eBay in Europe outside of the U.K. Vodafone Italy customers will be the first to be able to download a free application in order to search for and buy items on eBay. The application will come loaded on phones in the future and Vodafone expects to launch the service across its European markets later this year. EBay has experimented with different mobile offerings. In Germany, it launched a customized version of the Opera Mini browser that lets users buy, sell and track bids. EBay also allows any U.K. mobile user to bid for and buy items on their phones. Also this week, Vodafone announced that its customers, starting in the U.K., will be able to download an application to their phones that will allow them to edit their MySpace profiles, upload photos and blog entries and send and receive MySpace messages. It's the first mobile offering for MySpace in Europe, Vodafone said. All three services will be available within Vodafone Live, the operator's mobile portal.
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TechWeb - Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom now all have local versions of YouTube.