How Google Ate YouTube

Jason Dowdell of “Marketing Shift,” writes this about Google vs. YouTube:

For the moment YouTube appears to have an insurmountable lead in the user-generated video space. YouTube has the quirky, clever, and oddball content from thousands of individuals, while Google Video has Mr. Magoo and Charlie Rose. However, Google has several things — namely Google Checkout and an advertising network — that YouTube doesn’t, and the power of the purse could turn the tide. IF Google placed more ads on its website and shared some of the revenue with contributors, they would get many of the YouTubers to post on its website. Google should make a deposit to each contributor’s Checkout account, let’s say $4 for every thousand videos streamed. (Or, Google could pay a smaller amount by check if people really don’t want to participate in Checkout.)

Maybe Jason is one of the majority of people that don’t know that a revenue-sharing model already exist. If that’s the case, it makes this post even more interesting.

Here’s WillVideoForFood’s recommended introduction for the Harvard Business Study “B Case” on YouTube: “Chad Hurley sat at his window looking out over the empty parking lot of YouTube (ever notice how many HBR case studies start like this). How had he let the $400 million offer slip away, and how had his company been overtaken by Google? What happened to his site- once the most popular online video site on the Internet?”

Here’s how Google will Eat YouTube by 4th Quarter 2006. Is anyone writing this down?

• Placing video thumbnails on all search results (like they do with Google images)
• Sharing revenue with creators
• Cutting legitimate deals with valuable content owners (including networks)
• Using the advanced indexing to search other video sites.
• Provide contextual ad serving so advertisers can select relevant videos. If I’m selling Tampons I want to advertise on that annoying teenager talking about her cat. If I’m selling Gatorade I want to be all over the extreme videos.

The result? YouTube remains as a very popular online video community. As much as I knock YouTube, it’s a trend setter. It will live on. I’ve watched the functionality grow, and it’s got a giant leap above competitors not just in traffic but in user experience. But common. Google can gulp.