Sky Broadcasting, based in Britain, struck a deal recently with Google to provide its broadband users a Sky-branded package of Google’s search, advertising, communications, and video products.
This marks the first time that Google will license its latest and biggest acquisition to a third party, though it is not the first third-party partnership it has taken part in.
The Sky-branded version of YouTube will allow its users to do everything that normal users are able to do on the video sharing site. This means that they will be able to edit, upload, and share their videos on the site.
Users will also be able to download and upload videos from their mobile devices.
Before this announcement, during the past weekend there were murmurs of the formation of a power team composed of News Corp.’s Fox, Viacom Inc., CBS Corp., and NBC Universal to do nothing less than launch an online video behemoth to rain on YouTube’s $1.65 billion parade.
The potential partnership was revealed by the Wall Street Journal on Friday, and though the deal is far from done, the four television giants are pondering a joint venture that would involve an online source for video clips from the networks’ large library of television content.
Of course, these television bullies are not doing this just out of spite for Google and YouTube (though that could very well be part of it). There are large loads of money to be had for the winner of this race.
According to Parks Associates, a market research firm, revenue from online video services in the U.S. is expected to exceed $7 billion by 2010. This would mark an enormous jump from this year’s $1 billion in revenue.
Parks Associates also indicates that 85% of online video revenue will be derived from ads attached to videos next year, and that by 2010, 40% of total revenue will be derived from services for rending or downloading movies and television shows.
Sources:
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3648481
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061209/wr_nm/media_youtube_dc
http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20061209/tc_cmp/196602812
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