is the fallout between google and viacom a route to market for smaller online video providers who are willing to play by the rules? personally I think whatever the outcome Youtube has a bg enough grip on the market to hold its share. That is unless people start pulling all their content which could be a problem. individual users will be slower to boycott however and these are the best videos anyway arent they? fat guys dancing, practical jokes, hidden cameras…priceless!
Viacom/Google Fallout: Prime Time For Smaller Competitors To Woo Content Partners
by Shankar Gupta, Wednesday, Mar 14, 2007 6:00 AM ET
IT’S PRIME TIME FOR SMALLER video players to step in and make content partnerships as relations between Google and traditional media companies grow increasingly frosty. That was the assessment of industry watchers in the wake of the $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit filed Tuesday by Viacom against the search giant and its subsidiary YouTube.
Viacom is likely to seek out other partners who are more responsive in developing strategies to pay media companies whose content appears on their sites, said Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey. “They think they’ve waited long enough for Google and YouTube,” he said. “What they’re going to do is work aggressively to get distribution everywhere else.”
Citing a major deal with YouTube rival Joost and smaller initiatives that allow small site owners to create custom clips of Viacom content and syndicate them on their Web sites, McQuivey said that major media companies’ dissatisfaction with Google-YouTube is an opportunity for up-and-coming players.