"Once an industry initiative is formed, Google will be forced to accept the common model rather than use its own solution as a competitive differentiator," Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey said. "The pressure on Google to go along with this cooperative initiative will be intense, as the fate of existing lawsuits will likely hinge on Google's acceptance of the common solution."

The content? Well, it's going to have TV clips from NBC and Fox, plus films from their respective movie studios. You'll be able to watch ad-supported shows like 24 and Heroes for free, and they're working on more deals with Sony and Time Warner to supply shows and clips. Sounds like we've finally got someone to stand up with GooTube in a non-theoretical way. – Jason Chen

Squawk on the Street [CNBC]

Thanks Ray!

Ars followed up to ask if they take the same active measures to identify copyright-molesting content that they're asking YouTube to follow, but naturally didn't get a response from either iFilm or Viacom. They also talked to a copyright attorney, who said that because Viacom's essentially asking for a "new interpretation of the DMCA" in its lawsuit (YouTube follows the current interpretation), and there's no precedent for a judge to follow, "Viacom's own conduct with iFilm will likely be a factor that the judge looks at."

What's that delicious taste I suddenly I have in my mouth? Oh wait, I think I know what it is—sweet, sweet irony. – Matt Buchanan

Infringing videos on iFilm could cause problems for Viacom [Ars Technica]
Image via Flickr

The big fish in the growing pond though is the BBC, which YouTube has locked up for a multi-year deal to create two entertainment channels and a news channel. Interestingly, the news and one of the entertainment channels will have ads placed by AdSense. According to the BBC, there will "possibly pre-roll adverts (shown as part of the video clip) as well." On top of that, because of the ads, the news channel will be off-limits to UKers because it's ad-supported.

I'm suddenly not as psyched as I was when I first read the headline... – Matt Buchanan

Google Courts Small YouTube Deals, and Very Soon, a Larger One [NYT]
BBC strikes Google-YouTube deal [BBC]

Zucker whines that "YouTube needs to prove that it will implement its filtering technology across its online platform. It's proven it can do it when it wants to." It sounds strange, considering NBC has an official deal with YouTube, but not when you consider how wishy-washy NBC has been, pulling clips not officially uploaded by the channel.

Murdoch's criticism is more of the same old, same old: "How do you monetize it?" It's still the question du jour for sure. Then again YouTube's founders, who each walked away with over $320 million seem pretty monetized. – Matt Buchanan

NBC blasts Google's YouTube over copyright [CNET]
Murdoch the latest media mogul to take on YouTube [CNET]

Google Video is going to turn into a mere video search engine, indexing content from YouTube as well as other video sites on the web such as DailyMotion. Google wants to be the place you go for video, even if the content doesn't happen to be hosted by them. Tricky tricky, Google.

Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, Google Video's storefront looks to be headed for YouTube. This is huge, huge news in the world of online video.

Setting up premium content on YouTube is a big priority for Google, and if they do it right iTunes will have a pretty meaty competitor on their hands in the field of online video stores. Google's been taking down copyrighted material whenever asked since buying YouTube, and it looks like all that butt kissing was to show that they're a good company to work with. By splitting YouTube's content into homemade and commercial they'll be trying to legitimatize the site as a profitable place to sell content.

One can imagine searching the new Google Video for Lost and getting both homemade Lost parodies as well as actual episodes. The parodies would be free to view, while the episodes would cost you a couple of bucks.

So what do you guys think? From where I'm sitting this looks to be a pretty smart strategy, one that will use the current overwhelming popularity of the site to create a built-in customer base for when they start charging for content. The biggest issue I see is with the quality of the streams — they certainly aren't worth paying for at the moment. If Google either spruces up the streams or makes the for-pay streams higher quality, they might just have yet another hit on their hands. –Adam Frucci

Google announces overhaul of Google Video strategy, plans for YouTube's future [via Slashdot]

We hope that both Google Video and YouTube's quality both increase, rather than go to Shitsville, as is so often the case when the number one and number two merge. It's never pretty whenever we make a number one and a number two together. – Jason Chen

Google snaps up YouTube for $1.65B [AP via Gawker]

Thanks Ray!