Google's YouTube to offer paid TV shows?

Posted Dec 2nd 2009 3:40PM by Brian White
Filed under: Competitive Strategy, Google (GOOG), Apple Inc (AAPL)

Google (GOOG) has been pondering about how to more fully monetize YouTube, and the answer may be one of the most obvious alternatives: sell streaming content instead of giving nearly everything away for free, even with all the different kinds of ads YouTube features now.

This should not come as a surprise. Google is experimenting with as many revenue models as possible to try and tap into the potential war chest of cash waiting to fall down from the world's largest video website property. The first volley? Compete head-to-head with Apple (AAPL) iTunes and offer individual television episodes for $1.99 each.

Will consumers pay that to only see their content on a laptop of computer screen (or possibly streamed to the bevy of smartphones that now support YouTube)? After all, Apple has an entire universe of iPods and iPhones where iTunes video content can be downloaded to and used at the consumer's leisure. Google's stance, like all of its products, is that internet access would be required to view its paid content since it would come on-demand from the web -- not be downloaded and stored on a device.

But then again, would Google want to launch a "video rental" store similar to what Apple, Netflix (NFLX) Amazon.com (AMZN) and Roxio's CinemaNow service already offer? Google has to pockets to start becoming a content seller to supplement its huge free content, ad-supported business. But then again, Google has always said its job is access to information, not distribution of paid content (becoming a content provider). Times do change, though.

Tags: Apple iTunes, AppleItunes, GOOG, Google, Google TV, GoogleTv, inthenews, iTunes, YouTube

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

12-02-2009 @ 6:43PM

Beltway Greg said...

Google = Microsoft. Sooner or later these folks end-up raising their right hands. The potential for chicanery is just too apparent. Once upon a time people believed that AOL was the internet. Today people believe Google to be the internet.
Phones, ads, news, etc......At some point this will change from being a natural monopoly to simply being a monopoly.