Google-Eyed with Alarm: How the YouTube Deal Has the Internet in Shackles
Does Aunt Emma Know?
That’s the real $1.65 billion-dollar question as online advertisers and Web publishers across a broad spectrum of industries begin to embrace online video for everything from the news of the day to product demonstrations to conversations with the CEO. Or with your Aunt Emma.
The stakes are high. Consider: according to a newly-released study, 42 of the top 75 cable TV networks now consider broadband video to be their network’s top new business priority, surpassing by a wide margin all other advanced services, including video-on-demand. What most advertisers don’t know and what the major search engines aren’t saying is that video search is much more difficult to pull off than static-page search. With no text for search-engine spiders to easily devour, it’s hard to figure out which content is in fact video — and it’s even harder to decipher what a video is about, who posted it and how relevant it is.
Video is perhaps the most compelling — and online, the most personal — way of conveying information. Control by any single entity, however benevolently it regards itself, is unacceptable. The fact is, the Web is poised to become the largest distributor of video content in the history of the planet — bigger than any TV network, cable outlet or Hollywood studio. Control by any single entity, however benevolent it regards itself, is simply unacceptable.
Lord of the Universe
Consider just some of the implications of having GoogleTube look no further than its own walled garden for video content.
Earlier this year, Anheuser-Busch generated Super Bowl buzz — and more than 22 million site visits — by promoting online versions of its TV spots. Part of what made this a win for Anheuser-Busch is that the traffic went back to its site — where it controls the branding, it controls the user experience, it gets to capture the leads, it gets to monetize the traffic.
Not so with GoogleTube. When folks like you, me and Aunt Emma search Google for video — and we will, because we’ll mistakenly believe that video search is a mere extension of conventional search — we won’t be getting our content directly from the content creator. We’ll be getting whatever’s on Google.
If we’re lucky, we’ll find content that the content owner actually wants us to see. For example, perhaps Coca-Cola will happily post its latest, heartwarming holiday ad on GoogleTube. But when we type in “Coke,” the company’s advertising investment may very well be usurped by yet another “hilarious” 10-foot geyser of Diet Coke and Mentos, shot for free by Emma’s nephew, the irascible Frat Boy Johnny.
Unless and until Google video search becomes the universal, worldwide search we all expect it to be — a search that goes beyond Google’s own walls to find relevant content across the Net — Google has a stranglehold on Internet freedom.
Google may still be several notches short of evil, but the company is moving ever closer to the Lord Acton’s admonition about “absolute power corrupting absolutely.” And that ought to be a clarion call to everyone within spitting distance of a browser to look at the Google/YouTube deal with fresh eyes.
Reader Comments.
Finally someone has broached the subject of Google and its desire to create its own “information ghetto”, a walled off area that denies it’s users/inhabitants access to the freedom and free expression of the internet world.
Ah, what money has done to the sanctimonious leaders of new evil empire!!!!!!
Interesting POV. We’ve always been wary of building a “walled garden” at Revver, which is why we have an open API. Someone like Anheuser-Busch — or even someone much, much smaller like Lonelygirl15 — can use our API to build a site where they control the user experience and monetize their content. The good news is that “Revverized” videos are being indexed by all the major players, so perhaps the stranglehold will not come to be. Cross your fingers.
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