I came across this great little collection of notable bloggers’ posts on the topic.  What strikes me is that so many people who get technology still seem hung up on the whole copyright lawsuit thing.  Clearly more of them need to read posts like the one I wrote back on September 18.  I’m not exactly in a position to say “I told you so!” because I didn’t explicitly predict a Google acquisition, although it is certainly along the lines of what I was alluding to when I said it was the most significant portion of their press release.

I’ll restate what I said then in light of the “in the dark” comments of bloggers like Mark Cuban and Jupiter Analyst Joseph Laszlo (who, by the way, even strikes a kinship with his fellow naysayer Cuban in this post): copyright infringement will not be an issue.  Read my lips.  Copyright infrigement will NOT be an issue.  If it was, do you think the major record labels would be standing in line to sign up for the new YouTube copyright screening revenue generator service? 

Copyright owners are drooling over an opportunity to instantly monetize a massive consumer audience without the costs, both monetary and relationship-wise, of suing every 14 year old who posts a homemade karaoke video on YouTube done to the new Justin Timberlake song.

And that’s exactly what Google gets out of this deal.  Of course the boys have to say things like “we have found some opportunities to leverage Google technology in the YouTube offering.”  But at the end of the day, this is a stock-for-stock deal that leaves YouTube operating independently as its own company in its own office.  This is Google building its media monetization empire, not cramming its intelligent search-based ad network into another online property. 

Google is not buying an audience.  Google is buying innovative technology that can identify copyrighted audio and video content within a user-created amateur video, calculate the royalties owed to the copyright owner based on ad revenue generated from the video’s traffic on YouTube, and deliver payment to the copyright owner with full back office reporting.  Google is buying a business, and they’re buying it with Google stock.

Joseph Laszlo asks, “Will Yahoo follow suit?”  I say good luck to Yahoo.

 
      This is clearly going to be the best movie in the universe since way before the beginning of time. 
               

I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I can’t speak first hand, but word on the street is that Al is pretty convincing and persuasive.  I guess I just wonder if a) his motives are pure, or if this is a great way to build some goodwill and press clippings for another presidential run, and b) his success is due to his undying passion for the environment and all things "global cooling", or the PPT jockey who whipped together his hypnotic presentation.

I read The DaVinci Code a couple of
years ago. In fact, I listened to the first half of it as a book on
tape driving from Toronto to Ottawa and back. After 8 hours of
listening to the plot unfold I was hooked. I marched directly to my
neighbourhood Chapters, bought the book, and finished it in 3 days.

When I first heard about Tom Hanks doing the movie (which comes out
tomorrow) I shook my head and took solice in having read the book
first, so I wouldn’t be sucked in by the condensed,
sure-to-be-stripped-down on-screen version. I decided at that moment
that I absolutely wouldn’t see the movie.

And then came The DaVinci Code Quest on Google.

In their first large scale promotion of the sort, Google has teamed up with Columbia Tristar Marketing Group to promote the crap out of this film.  The only way I could figure out what the promotion was about was to add it to my Google Homepage.
Wouldn’t you know that the little content module doubles as my
’scorecard’ for the contest, so as soon as I added it I had challenges
to complete. Within about 5 minutes of messing around with secret codes
and symbols and puzzles, I was hooked on The DaVinci Code all over
again.

Now, 48 hours and 2 completed puzzles later, I’m afraid to say that
I’m considering going to see the movie. I won’t like Tom Hanks, that I
can still promise myself. I won’t go on opening weekend either. But
dammit, Google managed to wedge this sucker onto my homepage and I’m
back on the DaVinci wagon.