Here is one more in the continuing set of moves by different companies jockeying to establish their positions in the network era.
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Google is attempting to go against iTunes with this experimental initiative as it explores ways to monetize its YouTube capability and providing a connection through Google Checkout. Wonder what Steve Jobs may see to Eric Schmidt when they meet next?
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Finally it has come....given the popularity of youtube and the form of the content (video) it was obvious that google would try to provide 'download' capability and try to monetize it.
ReplyDeleteFrom google's perspective, the word 'partners' is important over here. They will have to be selective while choosing their partners. One because of IP issues (i might be a partner but i might have violated IP while uploading content which creates trouble for google) and secondly, you would want to choose partners who have chance of getting most downloads (thus effectively increasing google's revenue). I wonder if some partners will start asking for profit sharing from google (may not be a bad idea for google if they want quality content).
This model poses serous threat to apple, no doubt about it. Because now I no longer need iTunes as my gateway and my content pool became close to infinity (as against few thousand/million songs controlled through iTunes). Plus the threat of getting something for free against 0.99 cents is huge for Apple. It will be interesting to see what apple does, particularly on iPhone as youtube is one of its main apps.
I'm not sure how effective Google's pay-per-download monetizing strategy will be. Industry trends imply that users are moving away from having content stored locally, and instead retrieving it in real time from the net. Metcalfe's Law and the Bandwidth Law support this trend as mobile devices (like iPods and cellphones) gain wider and faster connectivity. Once I can use my device to browse the internet at broadband speeds from any locale, I'll glady visit YouTube.com every time I want to play a video, rather than downloading it for a fee.
ReplyDeleteI agree Marc that many times case you are making might be true but these are a lot of places in the world (for example India) where users are charged based on amount of data browsed on internet (some MB limit per month and then extra charges for each extra KB accessed). Plus in many parts in the world you do not get continuous connectivity and desired connection speed. In these cases downloading content from youtube becomes desirable.
ReplyDeleteAnother time you might to download video is when you want to embed it in presentation or something and view it offline.