IP Democracy: WSJ: Google, YouTube Deal Could Be Today

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google’s purchase of YouTube could be announced as early as today, after the market closes, although paradoxically the paper is quick to note that the deal still could fall apart. The search giant’s acquisition of the hot video site has to be approved today by the two companies’ boards.

The sketchy details: the purchase price is $1.65 billion (another $500 million tacked on to the price over the weekend?) and YouTube will be allowed to maintain some measure of independence from its parent, keeping its offices, staff and name. If the latter detail is true, smart move by Google.

Meanwhile, both companies each separately announced big content deals this morning. YouTube announced a pact with CBS under which CBS Television Network, its premium television channel, Showtime, and its basic cable/digital media service, CSTV Networks, Inc., will offer short-form video programming from its news, sports and entertainment divisions on YouTube starting this month.

The two companies will split the ad revenue that the new content offerings generate. Moreover, CBS will be the first broadcast network to test YouTube’s new “content identification architecture and reporting system,” which supposedly allows the company to determine if any of its intellectual property has been uploaded without authorization to the web site. If so, CBS will have the right to take it down.

In addition to athletic events from CBS’ CSTV channel, the content to appear on YouTube includes:

—CBS Entertainment; including short clips from top CBS programs including “Survivor,” “CSI,” and “The Late Show with Dave Letterman,” as well as mini-previews and footage from its new fall lineup.
—CBS News; including short videos from “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,” “The Early Show,” and “60 Minutes.”
—CBS Sports; including analysis of college and professional sports, as well as programming from CSTV
—Showtime Networks, including promotional video clips from its critically acclaimed original series including “Dexter,” “Brotherhood” “Sleeper Cell” and “The L Word.”

Google has struck a deal with Sony BMG Music that will make the record company’s music video collection available at no charge to Google Video users, but with a couple of interesting deal twists. First, Google plans to make the music videos available to its AdSense publisher network, presumably to allow sites to publish the videos from an automated feed. (Why AdSense publishers would want to publish music videos is a little unclear to me.)

In addition, Sony and Google will work together to launch a user-generated service that allows users to access certain Sony copyrighted songs when creating their own content. This permission-based copyrighted material access dodges altogether the need to detect unauthorized use, at least for the content Sony makes available under this part of the deal.

Like CBS and YouTube, Sony and Google will split the advertising revenues from their agreement.

Update: Google added another music company deal to its action-packed day. The emerging online video titan has a pact with Warner Music Group. The deal seems to mirror the Sony-Google deal in most respects, although Warner will also be making videos available for sale at Google Video.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on October 9, 2006 11:18 AM to IP Democracy