• NetTeeVee, Thursday, March 29, 2007 1:15 PM

There's no guarantee Google will continue its domination of the Internet. A search leader's success comes down to PageRank and AdWords, a pair of technologies built on text. Searchable, advertizable video represents the next Internet land grab, which means Google is in trouble if it can't translate its text success to moving images.

Why? Because with video, Google has to deal with content owners and strike licensing deals and agreements, something that big media firms are reluctant to do with a company clearly so bent on Web-wide domination. The News Corp.-NBC Universal venture, which includes AOL, MSN, Yahoo and News Corp.'s MySpace as distributors, could be a potential "checkmate" against Google's pretensions to the video throne if more traditional media giants decide to join. Success there would force Google to accept the demands of big media in licensing and distributing their content.

However, this assertion presumes that big media content is the video king--though that may change. The argument could be made that media is rapidly becoming decentralized and democratized. Meanwhile, the big media venture, which has been hinted at in the press for almost a year, is already moving too slowly for today's consumer. Also, consumers will always be able to upload the media content they like, and if YouTube isn't the place for that, it'll be elsewhere. It's a losing battle for big media--just have a look at the music biz.

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