SEO Blog

I’ve been thinking a lot about the YouTube deal this week. I’m a bit slow, so it’s taken me a while to both think it through, and to write it up.

Funny enough, it’s not the dollar values involved that left me scratching my head. It’s the long term logic.

Everyone believes that Video Search is going to be big, and will continue to be big. The next big thing? Maybe. Perhaps. Video search is strong, but there’s a problem.

I’ve gone to YouTube many times, most recently to watch a video shot at The Who concert in Vancouver last week. Therein lies the problem.

Who owns the copyright to most of the stuff posted on YouTube? If Google wants to monetize the videos it shows, (and it’s said it will), they will need to police the content posted on YouTube. Otherwise, they’re going to get hit by lawsuits from every copyright holder infringed upon, and every one of their competitors (Hello MySpace / Fox, Disney / ABC, NBC / MSNBC / MSFT, etc…) for every video they make available where one of those organizations owns the copyrights.

Meanwhile, over in Sunnyvale, Yahoo! executives are looking for ways to remarket their machine. Once thought to be among the most solid search related firms on the web, Yahoo! looks more than a little stale when viewed from afar.

It has been a difficult and demoralizing year for Yahoo!. Since this time last autumn, they initiated discussions with three important distribution partners, only to see those sweet deals melt into Google’s gaping mouth. Yahoo! and Microsoft both tried to woo AOL and MySpace before Google closed those doors. Yahoo! was the first to enter and exit talks with YouTube and, its recent expression interest in Facebook appears to be derailing as talks between the two firms are said to be going sour.

Right now, it seems to me Yahoo!’s biggest problem is not Google. Yahoo!’s biggest problem involves retaining its position as the natural alternative to Google against Microsoft and Ask. Given Google’s popularity, name recognition and obvious plans, it is hard, if not absurd, to imagine Yahoo!, or anyone else for that matter, breaking through anytime soon.

As if this wasn’t predictable enough. Earlier today, Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons stated that the world’s largest information and entertainment publisher was going to pursue copyright complaints against Google’s new toy, YouTube.

For the past year, music and entertainment companies have cried foul over the use of copyrighted content on popular social sharing sites such as YouTube, MySpace and Google Video. A quick visit to any of the three destinations will reveal thousands of copies of commercially protected materials. Did you miss Stewie’s impersonation of William Shatner interpreting Elton John’s Rocket Man? (Bleary-eyed ed. note: Eight minutes later and I am confused and uncertain of who has committed the greatest offense in this example.)

So what does this have to do with the business of search engine marketing?

Well, nothing directly. Indirectly however, we are watching the great sorting take place. This is history as it happens live. Monday’s announcement of Google’s acquisition of YouTube was a seminal event in the evolution of the Internet, signaling a radical increase in the availability and diversity of content types. Today’s announcement from Time Warner is the first in what is expected to be a series of legal challenges Google will be facing as a result of spending a billion and a half bucks on social-video networking.