I’m a frequent reader of Blog Maverick, Mark Cuban’s personal weblog, because the Dallas Mavericks owner analyzes the world of business like no other entrepreneur, analyst, or corporate CEO. He recently posted about the recent acquisition of Youtube by Google Inc, and how video piracy laws are handled differently than the heavily copyrighted music industry. This spells bad news for Apple and its iPod as their market grip on video media becomes much weaker than its 80% market dominance on legal music downloads, supported by iPod and iTunes.
Apple’s internet video store doesn’t reap the same profits as did the iTunes store simply because sites like Youtube offer content free of charge. For instance, if current apple customers switched over and bought Microsoft’s new digital media rival, Zune, then proceeded to download video clips via youtube onto their Zune, how could Apple reap anymore profits from these former subscribers? They can’t, which makes the whole internet video revolution all the more interesting.
My guess is that Google strongholds the industry using Youtube as its vehicle. Then, Apple, Microsoft, and Sony will duel it out for the position as #1 personal digital media product. All this fight and struggle while Google rings the register and earns large profits.
Which do you prefer – iPod or Zune?
Youtube doens’t have full length movies, but the short clips are perfectfor battery limited iPods and Zunes. Hopefully Google wont screw up the great service of Youtube
Youtube cannot support full length movies now, but Google could put an end to that. Google could create a “Home Movie” channel, a forum where aspiring filmmakers broadcast their films. Just a thought…
Also, Youtube will become more search friendly once Google replaces Youtube’s search index with Google algorithms. I have faith that they’ll move Youtube forward, not backwards.