Viacom hasn’t been gentle with Google this year. In February they slammed Google/YouTube with a massive DMCA take down demand (and an equally massive press outreach). A month later they sued Google for a billion dollars. Between those two events they signed a content deal with Joost, a YouTube competitor in the professional content space. All of this seems to stem from the fact that Google promised Viacom a revenue share deal on YouTube, then failed to table a compelling offer.
Today Viacom snubs Google again, choosing to work with Yahoo on search advertising. There are few details of the deal, but it doesn’t appear that Yahoo is making any revenue guarantees, which are becoming standard in large search advertising deals. Google gave Fox certain guarantees in a $900 million deal announced last year, and Microsoft almost certainly guaranteed revenue to Facebook in order to get access to their search traffic.
In this case at least, YouTube appears to be a liability to Google, and Yahoo gets the benefit of being the next strongest player.
ooh boy it’s gettin’ dirty! makes sense now why yahoo was spending so much time getting their ad piece up to snuff.
how is joost a youtube competitor? they do completely different things?
Wow, talk about being in the right place at the right time. My first impression is that Yahoo! was simply able to be the viable alternative when Viacom said, “we need ads and we don’t want to work with google!” No idea how the content will be distributed, so it’s way to early to surmise this will have much affect on Yahoo’s fortunes, but it certainly must feel good this afternoon to not have suffered another loss at the hands of Google.
lemon, if you think YouTube and Joost aren’t competing, you don’t understand the end game at all.
A “snubbing” as you call it by Viacom does not make YouTube a liability of Google. If anything this is you, yet again, over-reaching the news. If Viacom really is out to snub Google then ultimately they will suffer for their petulance instead of doing what is best for their business.
Tom - I said “in this case at least.” How am I over-reaching? This is editorial, by the way, which means I express opinions. I’m pretty sure that Google took themselves out of the running for this deal because of the YouTube issue with Viacom. Whether Viacom is acting petulant or not is worth discussing, but Google clearly made this bed.
If you’re looking for a better angle to troll, I think a fair criticism would be “how do you know Yahoo didn’t just earn this deal outright?” I’d answer that with an observation that the Panama platform is still very young, and it would be unlikely Viacom would sign up for a multi-year deal with no guarantees without more assurances. You could counter that I don’t know for sure that there are no guarantees. I’d have to agree, and point only to the CNN article that called this a standard-type partner deal.
I get a lot more enjoyment out of arguing with myself than with the anonymous trolls. Try harder.
Bravo. For a number of good reasons, this is a wise and prescient move for both Yahoo and Viacom…and just one more example of how SueTube is destined to be a much bigger headache and distraction for Google in the months and years to come than they ever could have imagined…
michael - by ‘the end game’ don’t you mean - ‘on a general level’?
surely, there is substantial difference between a ugc-focused free-for-all, short clip vector like youtube and a full-length legacy tv show vector like joost
mathew - no, i mean end game. All the views and advertising dollars go the the professional content (I generalize, but its basically true). youtube, joost, iTunes, netflix and the rest are looking for deals to get access to tv content. whoever gets it wins.
I remember reading that Microsoft will be one of the Viacom’s content distribution partners of the new video offering. Any chance we’ll see Yahoo ads on MSFT sites instead of MSFT’s own AdCenter offering?
Microsoft was running Overture/Yahoo ads for quite some time (and may still be) so this will be interesting to see play out.
Mike, your audience is very web savvy but not business savvy at all. The comments in this post show that. You should do some elementary educational posts on tech crunch to tell people about what business, as opposed to making websites, is all about.
Ted - yeah, well, I still love ‘em. Even the trolls with double digit IQs.
I loved comment #6 mike, really got to know how you think for the first time
Bilal - I’m operating on no sleep and a short fuse today. Normally I wouldn’t be so aggressive.
hey we have similar names mike
huh. what are the chances of that.
Nah Mike, I am pointing at the fact that how you said that you cross question yourself about events and deals, such as this one
“I think a fair criticism would be “how do you know Yahoo didn’t just earn this deal outright?” I’d answer that with an observation that the Panama platform is still very young, and it would be unlikely Viacom would sign up for a multi-year deal with no guarantees without more assurances. You could counter that I don’t know for sure that there are no guarantees. I’d have to agree, and point only to the CNN article that called this a standard-type partner deal.”
Trying to be your own critic, that interests me
Michael,
Another anonymous troll here LOL. From my perspective, I am glad Viacom is sticking it to Google so to speak.
Google’s level of arrogance is beyond anything I have seen in recent years. Larry and Sergey are two lucky tech head chumps with zero business acumen and full of themselves. Do no evil my ass, what are they, 3 years old? When Google first started, they couldn’t even get themselves bought by Yahoo or anyone else.
The real Google star is Schmidt who turned it into a business giant and at the same time knows how to stroke Larry and Sergey’s egos to keep them happy. That said, Google still thinks that they own the world and I am glad there someone is knocking them down a peg or two.
I’m been amazed for weeks at how little scrutiny “Panama” is receiving on the Street. I’m even more amazed at the scrutiny Viacom must have (not) given it. It seems that Terry Semel’s oft-quoted “broad smile” is enough to reassure everyone that Yahoo’s search is now competitive. I’ll be very curious to see their upcoming Q1 results.
anontroll - you forgot to be a troll. that was an interesting comment.
LOVE the new Michael!
It’s almost like it’s a real blog again…
Looks like I’ll miss you at MESH in Toronto in late May, but it would have been fun.
Good to see Yahoo! winning again. Google is a wonderful company, but they’re not always right, and their entry in a market does not always mean that they’ll dominate it (dMarc is a good example, but the list is long).
Of course Joost and YouTube compete, but the world is big and life is long, and there will be other entrants before the world goes IPTV in earnest.
This Yahoo! deal smells like Sumner Redstone just couldn’t bear to deal with Google given the YouTube copyright issues. I honestly doubt it’s anything more - especially given the fact that Panama is so young. If you don’t think elder Chairmen can influence a deal based on passion, I know some prominent Canadians you might want to meet.
The IPTV world will usher in a pain among content owners and purveyors equivalent to that felt in the music industry, and perhaps worse. The “long tail” in video content production will be much harder to sit through than the equivalent indie music scene - witness the dearth of good amateur content on YouTube. Half the time, the good stuff turns out to be a corporate plant.
Joost doesn’t necessarily win any more that Creative Labs or Live365 necessarily won. They’re just an early (admittedly compelling) entrant.
> I’m been amazed for weeks at how little scrutiny “Panama” is receiving on the Street. I’m even more amazed at the scrutiny Viacom must have (not) given it. It seems that Terry Semel’s oft-quoted “broad smile” is enough to reassure everyone that Yahoo’s search is now competitive.
Panama is Yahoo’s advert platform, not Yahoo’s search platform.
Panama “just” affects the ads displayed, not search results.
There’s a third option for Viacom other than work with Google or Yahoo - they could have built a platform themselves.
Why are they handing over such a core part of their business (advertising) to someone else? Even if it takes a billion dollars and a decade to get it done, it’s imperative for large media companies to be able to monetize themselves on the web, if they want to compete in the future.
Michael,
I love the post, and I love your comments on this one. They show a lot of depth about the business end game and cut through the nonsense from some of the anonymous trollers
A lot of the business development people at Joost came from Viacom/MTV. That has had a huge impact on the outcome of some of the early big deals for Joost. I’m a huge believer in Joost, since they don’t have to deal with the bandwidth costs of hosting long, high quality video content. Consider what a huge business advantage that is for Joost over Google!
Also note that eBay invested money into Joost, and some of the key Joost people were or are eBay employees. In my mind, it makes for a fascinating situation that Joost and YouTube are fighting it out in the video realm, owned in full or part by eBay and Google respectively. To add to the intrigue, half or so of the YouTube employees came directly out of PayPal.
It’s a crazy world we live in and the human element has played a huge role in how this battle is panning out! Looking forward to the future coverage!
the joost deal isn’t exclusive right?
And the comments on competing at the end game are good. (i’m agreeing with ma while he disses google again?!?! crazy) i would add that they are also very complimentary services as far as video intake is concerned. so essentially, while these two services do compete in the end, they are also two very different properties. i use joost and youtube at two very different times or as i like to say modes. i have to be in the slow down mode for joost. when i’m in my up and down mode its youtube. i don’t see the use of one cannibalizing the other really.
it may or may not be appropriate to say these two services mirror the relation of a live concert/performance to the physical album. what do you think?
I for one am happy to see Yahoo score a deal like this. Google’s arrogance sucks. Sometimes I get really frustrated at Yahoo for not taking more obvious steps to compete with Google. It isn’t even that difficult. We need more competition in the search market, not less. Maybe this is a one small step toward salvation for Yahoo…
I think it’s a little early to say there are no guarantees. It’s clear to me that Yahoo had to “buy” this opportunity and revenue share alone would not qualify given the monetization difference with Goog.
While I know they have issue with Goog, not sure Viacom would pass up the $$…
BTW - Goog is obsecnely arrogant and smell of Microsoft of yore. Good to see them get kicked. They really think they know it all and everyone owes them an audience. That they understand and YOU do not.
mich nice to see you so talkative; heh -
- I hope you get sleep / what is more important than your health?
- Please revisit when you decided to die for money / and realize it wasnt worth it
- Get some sleep my Friend, RB
We are all tired of Google, but they are the 100 pound gorilla.
I have been saying for awhile now that Google will dismantle YouTube and reconstruct it as Google TV or some other IPTV name, just like they did with Writely (now Docs & Spreadsheets). Google is only interested about backend software and how to monetize it. I personally think this will give them an excuse to rebrand the website and start integrating the service into there Google Pack.
The size of the Microsoft ‘guarantee’ for Facebook is $200 million, to be exact.
I am totally sick of google as they want to lay their hand on each and every product.:- http://technorama.livejournal.com/