EU Gives Okay To NBC/FOX YouTube Rival
European Union regulators gave the okay to NBC/News Corp’s joint venture for a video site designed to compete with YouTube. The service, announced in March as launching this Summer, will contain free video content from NBC and FOX TV networks and other properties owned by the two, content which will be available on websites owned by both companies (like MySpace), plus Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL sites, everywhere but Google.
This coalition is aiming to eliminate Google by becoming the major provider of copyrighted content, removing a major portion of YouTube’s appeal. If everyone but YouTube has copyrighted stuff, and that stuff doesn’t get taken down (because it’s legal) and what does make it onto YouTube dissapears via DMCA request, YouTube loses a lot of its market power.
At least, that’s the theory. The track record of these companies in video is less than stellar, so we’ll have to wait for a final product to pass judgement.
