“The upcoming Google Video Store, announced Friday at the Consumer Electronics Show, already has lined up commitments to sell thousands of downloads, including recent television broadcasts of popular CBS shows and professional basketball games, as well as vintage episodes from series that went off the air decades ago. A launch date for the store has not been released,” May Wong reports for The Associated Press. “With Google’s marketplace, content suppliers can name their own price, from zero on up. The content owners who charge for video downloads must share 30 percent of the revenue with Google.”
“Although Google’s service allows content owners more pricing freedom, it isn’t necessarily as liberating for users,” Wong reports. “While all of videos downloaded through Apple’s [iTunes Music Store] can be transferred onto a portable player – albeit only its own iPod – for on-the-go viewing, that won’t be true at Google’s service. Google has developed its own copy protection technology that so far prevents content owners from moving their video downloads to a mobile playing device. In instances where the content provider adopts Google’s copy protection scheme, watching a video sold through Google will require users to be online so they can log on and view it via the company’s video player. CBS and the NBA are among the content owners adopting Google’s copy protections.”
“In another distinction from iTunes, Google Video so far works only on Microsoft Corp.’s Windows-based PCs and not yet on Apple’s Macintosh computers,” Wong reports. “By relying on its own proprietary copy-protection technology, Google threatens to compound the frustration that some consumers feel when they buy songs from one online source like the iTunes store, only to discover the music can’t be played on an incompatible gadget… Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff offered a possible explanation for Google’s decision: ‘It’s arrogance.'”
Full article here.
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Related article:
Google to launch Google Video Store; supports iPod for non-copy-protected content only – January 06, 2006
I’m struck most by a paradox – Google’s seemingly iTunes Music Store-friendly recommendations of the new music search section on their website, vs. a direct competitor in video? Maybe they are just hedging their bets both ways – thinking they can’t catch up to Apple in music, but can beat them off the start in video? Hmmmm….maybe time will tell.
It could JUST be possible that this is Google’s first mistake.
Time will tell, no doubt.