I'm just wondering whether YouTube followers are going to cotton to having a big corporate parent, Google, and established networks like CBS and NBC starting to move into their viral-video territory.
How much of YouTube's popularity has been the sense that it was an alternative to just the kind of large, corporate-controlled media outlets, "ThemTube" for lack of a better word, that it was an alternative to. And where is the business model for all those Mentos testing, joke-telling, network-neurality-backing videos anyway.
And when does Google, which has been claiming the "David" mantle of sorts in the network neutrality fight with the telcos while cornering the market on all known information, become the 'Big Media' that future garage innovators start having to worry about?. And what is the broadcast networks' role in this new world of online video anytime, everywhere?
Everybody has to be into broadband, clearly, particularly if it becomes the video delivery mode of choice. But, also as clearly, not every model is going to work or be worth the money being ponied up for just showing up.
YouTube's all-stock sell-out to Google (not yet meant pejoratively, but you never know), and for almost three times what NewsCorp. paid for MySpace.com, does at least evoke the Internet bubble of yore, broadband video style.
By John Eggerton
