Many pundits predicted when Google acquired Youtube that a number of distribution deals would be signed with major content houses which would legitimise the service and allow Youtube to serve Google adverts alongside videos.
However, 6 months later very few deals have materialised and the big news this month instead has been Viacom’s billion dollar lawsuit, which doesn’t bode well for Youtube. In addition to this, we had the announcement yesterday of a new joint venture between NBC Universal and Fox to create a new video portal to ‘rival’ Youtube. Distribution deals have already been struck with Yahoo, AOL, MSN and MySpace which will put the new service in front of a lot of eyeballs.
Do you think that Youtube will be able to develop along the lines that many people expected by doing big deals with media houses? It looks to me like many media houses aren’t falling over themselves to work with Youtube. Or, do you think Youtube will continue to be the number one site for personal videos, once it is finally forced to police properly the uploading of copyrighted material?
