Once in a while I get access to some intelligence in my “business capacity” that is confidential.
The writer in me obviously wishes to write about it ASAP but that’s not the ethical thing to do, especially when I am asked to keep it hush-hush.
While sources like PaidContent.org, GigaOm.com, TechCrunch, ValleyWag and company are in the business of reporting on such information (and to do so faster and more accurately than one another) and do a great job of it, I have to realize and accept that I am first and foremost a business person who happens to also write on a myriad of blogs.
This one - which has the oh-so-techie name of HipMojo.com - covers the Web at large and search and video in particular; two things our company operates in through MetaMojo.com and WatchMojo.com, respectively. HipMojo.com is one of the most popular blogs (they all are to varying degrees, but traffic-wise, this one is head and shoulders above the rest, which is normal since it’s a web-based publication about the Web); if you judge by the readers, it certainly looks like it’s the most successful one as well, I presume.
Anyway, another-excessively-long prelude out of the way: Last week I noticed that my contact at Google Video had swapped his email signature to show YouTube’s address. I naturally inquired to find out if Google Video would fold into YouTube, something that many people had suggested.
I had always suspected that YouTube would remain as is, just less “wild/anything goes” as media giants pressure and threaten Google to clean YouTube up. I did, however, think that Google Video could become the paid video content platform in Google’s quest to generate revenue from Lord-Knows-What. By paid, I figured ad-supported or subscription.
When I spoke to my contact, he asked me not to “go to print,” but did tell me that indeed YouTube would remain as is but Google Video would become a search destination, but that it would not be shuttered. Please note that I am only writing about it now because Google’s Blog released the news today.
I did write these two other posts:
:: Is Google a Conglomerate? Their Challenges in Video Suggest It Is
:: Google/YouTube Strategy Highlights Why Video Advertising Might Never Actualize
Yeah, I know, I was a bit irritated at GooTube. I showed some restraint, but I think Google will mess up video. There, I said it. I won’t get into all of the reasons why. At least not now. They will mess up the content, they will not maximize or optimize the revenue possibility. They will also mess up the community that is YouTube. It’s certainly not too late to change things, but from what I see, the future of online video will not be forged by GooTube; in the sense that “not to the degree that Ad Sense impacted search advertising. Obviously, by virtue of being the #1 player in search and video, GooTube will impact video search and video advertising quite a bit. I am not senile folks. Well….
Back to the story, Google today stated:
Google’s strength — and its history — is grounded in search and in innovating technologies to make more information more available and accessible. YouTube, meanwhile, excels at being a leading content destination with a dynamic community of users who create, watch and share videos worldwide.
Google search results already include links to content that’s hosted on YouTube. Starting today, YouTube video results will appear in the Google Video search index: when you click on YouTube thumbnails, you will be taken to YouTube.com to experience the videos. Over time, Google Video will become even more comprehensive as it evolves into a service where you can search for the world’s online video content, irrespective of where it may be hosted.
This is part of Google’s overall goal to give you the highest quality search results possible.
(…)
YouTube, as we’ve stated previously, will remain an independent subsidiary of Google, and will continue to operate separately. Google will support YouTube by providing access to search and monetization platforms and, when/where YouTube launches internationally, to international resources. YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen and the rest of the YouTube team will continue to innovate exciting new ways for people to “broadcast themselves.”
Google is showing clearly that when it comes to video, they bow to YouTube. That is good on some levels, mainly that Google will not mess up most of what is good about YouTube. But, by the very basic basis that Google is a major media and technology company doing million-dollar deals with the very same companies that claim YouTube is ripping them off, this could end up very, very bad.
What exasperates the matter, frankly, is that those same companies will use legal means to try to beat YouTube in video. News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media’s MySpace, for example, launched MySpace Videos to compete with YouTube. Apparently, MySpace at one point drove anywhere from 20-75% of the traffic to YouTube. Oh, FIM is set to get $900 million over the next three years from Google in exchange for Google to “own” FIM’s search and search-related business. And if that’s not enough, Fox is subpoena-ing Youtube over piracy issues.
Yippie! The casualty in all of this will be the YouTube community. Trust me. We’re already seeing YouTube beginning to suck as demonstrated by News Corp. exercising its censorship muscle by playing the piracy card to cleanse YouTube of clips of a drunken-Paula Adbul.
At least if Google kept Google Video as a video-hosting community that it could use as a sandbox to push the envelope, then this acquisition could somehow work. If nothing else, keeping Google Video and cleaning it up (instead of making it a search service only) would leave them a hedge in the event the YouTube liabilities pile up and it never monetizes the inventory.
But what will happen is that Google will not have free reins to innovate in video because trust-you-me, YouTube is as illegitimate as Napster. It’s like having sex with a stripper, it’s fun and all, it feels good, but you sort of hope no one is watching and you know come sunrise, she might not be there. I tell ya, I love analogies… let’s see if Valleywag, Arrington, Ali and company can dream up an analogy like that.
Anyway, I really wish Google a lot of luck and have pretty much told them in no uncertain terms that I am making my services available to them if they wanted to duplicate the Ad Sense success onto video. Here was a basic way they can automate video advertising. Why would I do that? My largest holding, far and away, is Google’s arch-enemy Yahoo! But I own a Web TV company, and Google is a major player in the space, and their success means success to companies in the space (much like Ad Sense lifts all boats in a rising tide).
That’s not ballsy, brash, arrogant or over-confident.
It’s a fact. Rather, it’s a theory. It’s not mine though. Google is about to undergo a period of the Innovator’s Dilemma, as coined by Harvard’s Clayton Christensen. A company cannot be both defender of the guard and innovator of new things. It’s extremely hard. Google won search advertising mainly because Altavista and others had already thought of search and developed the basic model, right?
Google finetuned the algorithm but PageRank was not revolutionary, it was evolutionary.
I do not know who will win in video advertising. But something tells me, it won’t be Google. In other words, much the same way that the web derailed MSFT, methinks that video - and the hubris is trying to win in it online - will be a thorn in Google’s side.
Disclosure: GooTube is a distribution partner of WatchMojo.com. As well, our search unit, MetaMojo.com, has a video metasearch engine which queries amongst other sources, Google Video and YouTube (apologies for the barebones design, working on that as we speak).
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January 25th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
as a proud member of the youtube community i wanted to throw an idea to you. I am looking forward to the increased exposere that google will bring my own channel. the youtube community is not about privacy by its very nature it is interested in being seen. and heard. the increased traffic within youtube from nonmembers will translate into more members and the way the community would have changed on its own (over time) by natural selection will just be increased by the sudden rush of volume. the number of videos available will not suddenly increase as fast as the visitors and everyone will enjoy this extra exposure.