• Financial Times, Tuesday, October 10, 2006 11:02 AM

Steve Hurley, CEO of newly acquired Google unit YouTube, talked to the Financial Times a couple of weeks ago. Here are some highlights.

The paper asked Hurley what the difference is between YouTube and Napster, the peer-to-peer file sharing site that made stealing music seamless and ubiquitous. "I think it's not even a close comparison," he said. "Napster was a black market for music. Ninety-nine per cent of the music that people were downloading was illegal because they didn't have the rights for it. [Most YouTube content is] people taking clips from their cell phones and cameras, and news-breaking events."

Even if the majority of the videos on YouTube don't belong to copyright holders, there are still millions of clips being served by the site. Hurley says YouTube is committed to making it easier for copyright holders to find their content and remove it if they wish. This is the crux of the revenue-share agreements the site has struck with Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group. As for ad revenue, Hurley says a new advertising system is forthcoming.

"I think there's better ways to introduce advertising," he said. "We don't know necessarily what all the details are going to be. There are options for us to develop a system that benefits advertisers, allows them to get their brand and their story across, and for the users to respond to that, and to actually benefit from that because it's relevant to them. So we're going to try to build is a scalable, branded advertising service that doesn't necessarily rely on a huge sales force," he explained.

YouTube's vague ad plans may change, now that it's been acquired by Google. The deal certainly adds another layer to Google's plan to distribute video across its AdSense network of publishers. As for whether YouTube will introduce a rev-share agreement with content makers (a la Revver), Hurley said: "What we're really trying to do is build a community that's built around the reaction or the attention they receive. You have to be careful about when you introduce money to the mix. It changes the incentives."

Read the whole story at Financial Times »