Will Google Ring Its Digital Cash Register for Thee and TV
December 3, 2009
One of the media mavens wrote “Is YouTube Ready for Primetime? Google Wants to Stream TV, for a Fee” and illustrated the write up with pictures of my relatives from Harrod’s Creek cooking over a wood fire. The maven also chose a picture that showed my relatives watching the flames burning instead of sitting in the wooden hovel telling stories about the deer who got away.
The point of this write up to me is summed up in this passage:
YouTube already lets users watch a smattering of TV shows for free, with advertising. Now it envisions something similar to what Apple and Amazon already offer: First-run shows, without commercials, for $1.99 an episode, available the day after they air on broadcast or cable. Sources say the site’s negotiations with the networks and studios that own the shows are preliminary. But both sides seem optimistic, since models for such deals already exist. No comment from YouTube.
I thought that YouTube.com was 99 percent crap and one percent good content. I thought Google lacked the business acumen to do “something” with YouTube.com. I thought YouTube.com was a giant mistake that would function like a giant, digital albatross and make Google into a current version of the ancient mariner. Guess I was misunderstanding previous punditry?
I don’t have too much to add to the maven’s analysis. I won’t even question this statement:
But while Web users have an insatiable appetite for video, they’ve yet demonstrate much interest in paying for it. If any of this is going to work, that will have to change.
I think I will raise some questions that might be considered:
- What are the core technologies on which this alleged new initiative of Google rests? When were they developed? What other functions do these have, assuming the technologies do indeed exist?
- What are the costs of the alleged new service? How will Google’s present business model benefit from such a push if such a push takes place?
- What other rich media could be affected by such a push assuming the push is extended?
- Why haven’t other companies built a sufficiently significant competitive barrier to entry? What are the weaknesses of the existing services? is Google’s service competitively flawed? If so, in what way? Is it superior? In what way?
I can generate some other questions that pundits, mavens, azure chip consultants, Google watchers, and other experts should be considering. I wonder if these wizards know the Pope has a TV channel on Google? Digital Gutenberg, anyone?
Stephen Arnold, December 3, 2009
I wish to disclose to American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers that I was not paid to point out that questions about Google are yet to be answered. Maybe the truth is within one of the many Sergey-and-Larry-eat-pizza books?
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