I had lunch with two attorneys last week (the good news was that they paid -- and it was a sushi restaurant). One of the attorneys said: "Hey, Google has video now. I want to see if I can find some Van Halen music videos."

Yes, my attorney friends are not of the MySpace generation. I said, "Actually, Google has had video for quite some time."

"Oh," he said. "I thought it came out today because the menu on the top of the front page changed."

That was certainly correct. One of the most valuable pieces of Internet real estate had an adjustment last week. The links to Froogle and Groups are now gone. In its place is "Video New!"

Basically, this is a declaration of war against YouTube, an upstart that now dominates online video. Hitwise, which measures and analyzes Web traffic, looked at the impact of the menu change. Of course, Google Video saw a doubling of traffic.

As I noted in a recent piece for BloggingStocks.com, Google is leveraging its huge distribution -- such as AdSense -- to take on YouTube, as seen with its recent deal with MTV. Basically, online video looks like the next hyper-growth market for advertising. And it's something Google must win at all costs.

Here's the Hitwise's chart on the spike in traffic for Google Video:

Tom Taulli is the author of a variety of books, such as The Complete M&A Handbook (Random House) and operates InvestorOffering.com.

Now that Google Video has been launched -- and re-launched -- at Google's normal website at video.google.com, Google has now unleashed its Google Video service to European customers. Regulators in Europe fear that Google Video will unleash a rash of pornography and violent videos being uploaded and traded all across the new Google Video service. Hmm, why do the European authorities think this?

With Google Video launching in Britain, Italy, Germany, Spain, Canada and other countries, some fear that Google has inadequate resources to police the apparently vast amount of upcoming porn videos, violent videos and other videos of offensive material. To the point, I agree with this -- no algorithm on earth can possibly intelligently sift through all the muck to find what may be offensive and what may not be.

Google Video is quickly -- along with YouTube.com -- turning into a clearinghouse for all kinds of video content, from broadcast television episodes (sometimes illegally uploaded) to amateur videos (not that kind), the question is if more and more consumers will "consume" their video from the computer screen instead of the television screen? With PCs becoming a little more integrated in the home entertainment arena these days (with ultra-slow progress), your PC may join your satellite receiver/DVR/cable box next to your television. When that happens, and you have broadband Internet at your disposal, should cable companies and traditional content producers be scared? If they have not embraced changes, then yes they should.

With Google recently moving into the arena of offering free video content on its network, the search giant is testing its boldest move yet into a completely ad-supported content offering. It's hard to give away valuable content (that the distributor -- Google -- has to pay for) and support that content by advertising revenue alone. There are millions of customer leechers who will just take the content and will never generate any revenue by viewing/actioning the ads that support the content.

This leaves the "payment" for the content to fall on the rest of the consumer base. This model has worked in fine fashion for Google with its search business, obviously. Due to Google's reach, probably a small percentage of search customers ever have to click on a "sponsored link" for Google to make bilions of dollars in revenue every year. But will this model translate successfully to video content?

With "video" and visual advertising appearing above these new videos at Google, only time will tell if this strategy is successful or not. Videos will also be available for paid-use as well, pitting the new Video Google services on a competitive playing field with Apple Computer's iTunes service, which launched video content starting at $1.99 late last year with the announcement of the newer iPods that would play video content.

Apple, however, uses a strictly pay-use system, whereas Google is going in the opposite direction and will be trying to support video revenues solely (at this time) by complementary advertising.

As I've speculated on recently, Google appears to be betting -- against all good judgment -- that advertising will continue to fill its coffers full of money. From wireless internet service in its hometown of Mountain View, California to the launch of commercial videos for free, all of this is supposed to be supported by advertising. What kind of advertising, you might say?

Google has been incredibly successful at online advertising thus far -- more than anyone else. Those ads at the top and right of all Google searches (not to mention Google partner sites) bring in billions in revenue per year. That model works, no doubt. Google has a great knack of knowing how to present advertising to the target customer which is unobtrusive, highly relevant and timed just right.

Notice I say "target" with emphasis -- and Google is getting better and better at personalized advertising (TV networks should be jealous) with its personalized and customized services like Google Desktop, Google Gmail, and the Personalized Google homepage -- all of which tie customer habits into marketing knowledge for Google. Hence, Google's on the way to being the world's largest advertiser on any medium with the most intricate knowledge of its customers as any company in history. That's no small potatoes, folks.

Although Google likes to talk that it is a tech company -- not a marketing company -- I think that statement is somewhat of a windscreen for its true intentions. Sure, it takes incredible technology, programming expertise and user interface experts to make this all work -- that's all tech, whether human tech or computer tech. But, the endgame as I see it is for all this to serve a purpose -- and that is to make Google the world leader in coop advertising that will bring the company fortunes for quite a long time. Yes, this is still putting "all eggs in one basket", but then it's dropping eggs and baskets to every internet doorstep worldwide as much as possible. That's a lot of eggs.

Yahoo! has rolled out a new video service. It's about six months into the game and YouTube and Google Video have a running start, so it's odd to see Yahoo! jumping into the race so late. But being first isn't always the best. Yahoo! has had time to observe and plan out their own version. And certainly, Yahoo! as it has grown larger has figured out that a good idea is a good idea, which is why it has leapt aboard several bandwagons or snapped up several web 2.0 companies already.

Techarena.in has a good analysis on what Yahoo! offers with its video service that is appealing to users, which is that the service is offering a clean interface, and that Yahoo!'s video search is actually better than Google's. To top it off, relevant content in ads and other offers are show by Yahoo! to the search. It certainly seems like Yahoo! has thought this out and is actually offering something extra up, not just trying to imitate its rivals.

Michael Eisner hasn't been up to much since his departure from Disney.

It looks though, like Eisner is eyeing the Online Video space.  With broadband becoming more and more prevalent in US homes, the technological infrastructure/capability for streaming videos is reaching fruition.  With American Idol and the plethora of reality t.v. shows abounding, there is a discernible trend towards amateur/'real' videos and the corresponding stars and starlets.

The space is still being defined, but already net giant Google and Yahoo are getting positioned with video versions of their respective search engines. 

Google Video is a portal type page which is hoping to bridge the gap between amateur and licensed videos and programming. 

YouTube though is arguably the most successful player in this space, pulling in 9 million users a month (according to Nielson/NetRatings)

Eisner will also sit on the board of directors for Veoh.  The online network space is a very interesting one and one to keep an eye on. 

For Time Warner the natural motives would be to incorporate Veoh or a module/shell into its AOL portal.  The distribution aspect is also huge as Time Warner's video content is tremendous (ie. Warner Brothers).