Google to invest $500m into YouTube
Google is reportedly investing $500 million into YouTube in a bid to transform the online video site into an alternative broadcaster, according to Strategy Eye.
The search giant is in talks with content owners to secure both original and premium content and is willing to pay “tens of millions” of dollars per deal.
The article, which talks of Google’s focus on TV, also suggests that Google is considering bidding for online streaming service Hulu.
The reports follow Google’s recent acquisition of Motorola Mobility and Eric Schmidt’s appearance at this year’s Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival.
In August, Google bought Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in a bid to improve its position in both the smartphone market and the pay-TV market.
Google will be able to enhance its TV business using Motorola’s well established set-top box and IPTV infrastructure, which supplies video networks to some of the world’s largest pay-TV service providers.
“The obvious synergy is for Google to incorporate its Google TV software into Motorola STBs, which are bought by cable and other pay-TV platform operators,” said future scape at the time. “Google would likely provide the EPG, search and apps platform, for instance.”
future scape says Google could be ideally positioned to lead social TV by providing personalised and interactive ads with TV commercials and social TV discussions. “Potentially there’s everything to play for, but it won’t be an easy sell to the platform operators”.
Eric Schmidt certainly aimed to lay on the charm to build bridges with the UK TV industry at this year’s MGEITF in August.
Reporting from Edinburgh, Newsline columnist Ray Snoddy said, “naturally in everything it does Google seeks to advance the cause of humanity and the common good – while making honest billions along the way.
“Lord Grade could not have been more wrong when he denounced Google as a ‘parasite’. Rupert Murdoch was of course totally mistaken when he elaborated on the parasite theme by describing the company as ‘a tapeworm in the internet’. And how silly of former Channel 4 chief executive Andy Duncan to even suggest that Google took more revenue out of the UK than ITV’s total earnings.
“It was therefore totally daft for anyone to fear the arrival of Google TV in Europe early next year with the UK ‘well among the top priorities’. It was complete nonsense for silly players, such as the US networks, to think that Google was about to compete with them and start creating its own content. If that were to happen, all you would get, said the self-effacing Schmidt, would be a lot of bad sci-fi movies.
“No, the point was to create an open platform for the next generation of TV to evolve rather as the creation of the smart phone platform had sparked a whole new era of innovation, said Schmidt – oozing both natural and choreographed charm.
“Beware of someone who smiles at you that much, was the immediate comment of one media academic after the lecture.”