Category Archives: Digital ET

Etc., Online video, Strategy

Google acquires broadcast rights of YouTube

It’s official now. Google acquires YouTube for a whopping US$1.65 billion, in an all-stock deal.

While the markets reacted favorably and analysts seem happy, here is an interesting (and expected?) reaction from Steve Ballmer, as reported by Patrick Thibodeau of Computer World.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer today all but dismissed Google Inc.’s just-announced $1.65 billion purchase of video-sharing service YouTube as a waste of money … “If you look at most of the content up at YouTube today, it is copyrighted material,” said Ballmer. For all the chatter about how YouTube is all about home video, in the end people want to see things like replays of the recent 60 Minutes interview with former Hewlett-Packard Co. chairman Carly Fiorina, said Ballmer.

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Steve Ballmer

Etc., Online video

Online video sites, hot targets?

Yet MySpace offers an interesting contrast in how online video is already beginning to pay off. MySpace is used for online distribution of TV and film from News Corp.’s Fox Entertainment. The site, built around a network of home pages laden with messages and photos, already generates a huge volume of video, according to comScore Networks. A comScore report on Sept. 27 said MySpace generated 1.5 billion video streams during the month of July, beating out No. 2 Yahoo and No. 3 YouTube. The survey only ranks free video streams. If the market is measured by the number of video users, as opposed to the number of videos watched, MySpace ranks third behind Yahoo and YouTube.

More at Businessweek

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Etc., Mobile content

iPod Vs Mobile phone

Is mobile phone the Trojan horse for iPod?

If you’re in the market for a portable player of digital music and video, there’s far more than a single game in town—despite the mighty marketing muscle Apple Computer (AAPL) puts behind its ubiquitous iPod. Competing against the iPod isn’t easy—and rarely successful—but that doesn’t preclude many companies from trying.

Businessweek has more