Media Companies Mulling YouTube Rival
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Fox, Viacom, CBS and NBC are holding talks about buiding a rival to YouTube to host their online content. Any deal is still a long way off, however, the Wall Street Journal reports.
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(InfoWorld) - On Friday, media conglomerate Viacom upbraided YouTube for continuing to host throngs of Viacom videos without permission and demanded that over 100,000 of its clips be removed from the popular video-sharing site owned by Google. Viacom, whose properties include MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Comedy Central, and Paramount Pictures, ran out of patience after months of discussions with Google and YouTube, the company said in a statement. "It has become clear that YouTube is unwilling to come to a fair market agreement that would make Viacom content available to YouTube users," the statement reads. YouTube and Google have failed to deliver efficient filtering tools, allowingÂ "vast amounts" of unauthorized Viacom video to exist on the video-sharing site, the company said. YouTube acknowledged receiving a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) request from Viacom to remove the videos. "It's unfortunate that Viacom will no longer be able to benefit from YouTube's passionate audience, which has helped to promote many of Viacom's shows," YouTube said in a statement, adding that it will comply with the request. Viacom's move is the latest from copyright owners who are upset over the unauthorized uploading and streaming of their videos on YouTube, which is one of the most popular Web sites in the world. The copyright issue has long been a known liability for YouTube. Founded in early 2005, YouTube quickly became the world's most popular video-sharing site, beating established players including Yahoo, Microsoft's Internet unit, AOL, and Google. Impressed with that popularity, Google bought YouTube last November for $1.65 billion in an all-stock transaction, but it put 12.5 percent of the amount in an escrow account for one year to "secure certain indemnification obligations," it said. Since the acquisition, Google and YouTube have been busy negotiating with video content owners and developing technology to detect and remove copyrighted videos uploaded by users without permission. Beyond its attempts to strike deals with corporations, Google has recently also indicated its intent to share revenue with individual content owners. It has also begun integrating YouTube with the similar Google Video service. "We're pushing very, very hard for the success of YouTube as a brand. It has tremendous traction with the demographic that we care about. An awful lot of people are now using YouTube every day in their daily lives," Google CEO Eric Schmidt said this week duringÂ the company's quarterly earnings conference call. Schmidt said Google's primary focus with YouTube is user adoption, while it also experiments with advertising models. YouTube is growing its user base and advertising very fast, to the point that it's now clear to Google that the price it paid for YouTube is clearly justified, Schmidt said. In its statement, Viacom precisely complained that Google is benefitting from its content without providing Viacom with adequate compensation. "YouTube and Google retain all of the revenue generated from this practice without extending fair compensation to the people who have expended all of the effort and cost to create it," Viacom said.
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Google is working with Dow Jones, CondÃ© Nast, Sony BMG Music and other large content companies to syndicate their video content on other Web sites.
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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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Media conglomerate Viacom Inc. sued Google Inc. and its Internet video-sharing site YouTube for more than $1 billion on Tuesday in the biggest challenge yet to the Web search leader's strategy to dominate the online video market.
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A revenue-sharing deal between video startup YouTube Inc. and Warner Music Group Corp. is likely to be the first of a spate of content distribution partnerships between Web sites and music companies, industry officials say.
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YouTube, the popular online video   sharing service, is teaming up with major marketing and media   partners for a competition to discover the most talented   unsigned bands on its site.
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CBS ruled out a purchase of social video site YouTube Thursday, although its chief executive said it would not rule out the purchase of a smaller competitor. The comments were made by CEO Les Moonves in a presentation in London.
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Google and BSkyB in a video-sharing deal? Oh, the irony.
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Many are willing to bet that media companies will want to share ad revenue with the popular video Web site, despite questions about piracy.
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The media giant is a star on YouTube.
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As if to answer the question, "What's the real value of the paid content deals YouTube is not making with content providers like Viacom?" today, two new deals with NBC Universal were announced: one with the burgeoning player in the IPTV space, MobiTV, and the other with an emerging YouTube competitor, VMIX.com.
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The question on many people&#8217;s minds since the recent PR warfare between Google/YouTube and Viacom (and NBC) is: will YouTube retain its dominance or will it be supplanted by another site? That&#8217;s the same question that circulates around Google itself of course.  Two thoughts: 1. The &#8220;Head&#8221;: Professionally produced content is critical to YouTube&#8217;s long-term strength  Lazy Sunday, [...]
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The media industry is clashing with  YouTube over its proposal to offer anti-piracy tools only to  companies that have distribution deals with the top online  video-sharing service, media insiders said.
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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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Web search leader Google Inc. is in talks to buy YouTube Inc., the world's leading Web site for video entertainment, for close to $1.6 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing a person familiar with the matter.
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WASHINGTON - Two of the world&#39;s media titans may be getting set to square off in a clash that will have a wide impact across the industry.