Youtube maturing already?

What’s a video website going to do when they hit 2 billion video views every day? Well if your Google (owner of Youtube) then you create an elite team of television executives to strike deals with movie studios and television networks that would incorporate Hollywood content into the world’s most popular video sharing site.

Google are doing just this, according to the Los Angeles Times. They have hired Robert Kyncl, who was a former vice president for content acquisition at rival pay per view broadcaster Netflix.

YouTube have recently launched a video-on-demand service allowing viewers access to renting 300 plus movies from $1.99 to $3.99.  Movie theaters across the country should be very nervous.  A titanic shift appears to be in the making.  There is already an overcapacity of theaters around the United States, and the rise of video-on-demand is a new, cheaper, and more convenient distribution model that changes how the movie industry operates.

Google have also moved another executive across to Youtube in Dean Gilbert, VP of product management for Google TV. He has been named global head of content. Gilbert has been drafted in to help coordinate Google’s efforts with YouTube as well as negotiate with movie studios and emerging media companies to acquire movies and other professional content for YouTube.

Google are already dominating the search engine market, and are now looking to video and tv as the next target. CEO Eric Schmidt has said that the strategy behind YouTube was to first build an audience before finding ways to bring in revenue.  They now have the audience and are looking to premium and paid content next.

Premium content appears to be YouTube’s move to bring in revenue and profitability by offering entire movies and episodes online for a cost.

Apart from Youtube, Google are also pushing their television box as a rival to the Apple TV.  And having Google software in set-top boxes and tv sets which integrate internet streams from YouTube could give them the edge in the internet tv battle.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 19th, 2010 at 11:34 am and is filed under Internet TV Articles, Internet TV Explained, Internet TV news, Internet TV Websites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.