Search Engine Journal

Google Video Pay-Per-View?

Here’s Shankar Gupta’s piece at MediaPost (reg req’d) about Google gearing up to potentially charge users to watch full-length videos.

While more and more users are paying for content online, this move would (in my view) be premature. There’s too much competition out there and the broadband video market is too new (although it’s apparently working on the iPod) to institute a pay per view strategy.

Speaking of such competition, Starz’s Vongo (a $9.95 subscription service as opposed to PPV) will soon permit movie downloads onto a variety of devices. Eventual consumer adoption of such services will largely put video rental businesses out of business (and maybe Netflix too unless they go forward with a similar service, previously “indefinitely postponed”).

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Greg Sterling is managing editor of The Kelsey Group. He also leads The Kelsey Group’s the Interactive Local Media program, focusing on local search. Greg came to The Kelsey Group from TechTV’s “Working the Web,” the first national television show dedicated to e-business and the Internet.