Net Results: Anyone in Ireland who hadn't heard the name YouTube until internet behemoth Google bought the video storage site a couple of weeks ago almost certainly has heard of it now, writes Karlin Lillington
A controversial video on the site depicting a brutal attack on a young woman in Ballymun became a major topic on Joe Duffy's LiveLine programme on Tuesday.
Apparently a "happy slapping" attack, a phenomenon where gangs randomly assault someone and film it with a mobile for later viewing, the video showed a teenage boy launch himself at a 16-year-old girl passerby and kick her in the head with such force that she slammed into a concrete bollard as she fell.
The crowd watching this, very clearly in Ballymun, broke into taunts and laughter as she was struck. Duffy played the clip repeatedly so that listeners could hear the sound of the impact and the jeers.
The girl's distressed father as well as other callers demanded that Google remove the video - which had already been viewed 10,000 times and had been on YouTube for seven months.
How, they wondered, could this shocking video be placed on public view in this way, why was Google permitting such things, and where was their sense of corporate responsibility? (Note: Google removed the video in response to complaints when made aware it was there.)
In other words, Duffy's audience raised exactly the issues that were already plaguing YouTube before its buyout and that likely made selling on to Google very attractive for its founders - well, that along with the price tag of $1.65 billion (€1.29 billion).
Many marvelled that, with such policing headaches - not just for offensive content like this Ballymun video, but also the thousands of instances of copyright violation where people posted rock videos, television shows, clips from movies and other protected material - Google was willing to fork out so much money for YouTube, which also has the problem of not having turned a profit and having no concrete plans for a revenue stream.
Nonetheless, Google had already recognised some time ago that providing a storage site for user videos was - like so many things on the net with no visible means of support, including Google when it first started as an innovative, free search site - a great idea.
Google had already set up its own less-trafficked video site, as had its competitors like Yahoo and MSN, and free photo storage sites like Photobucket.com.
In the web world, sometimes you have to act now and think up the business plan later, especially if a concept is taking off in the way YouTube has.
To gauge accurately YouTube's impact on popular culture and how totally it dominates the video storage sector, one need only spend a few days in the United States. When I was out in California last week, YouTube came up constantly on the radio, on television and in the papers, not in stories about the company, but mentioned in passing as the place where one could find a video clip currently in the news.
With a major national election fully under way in the US, YouTube is full of bits of political advertisements of interest for various reasons, including some that were pulled before broadcast but now have been seen by millions anyway thanks to the video site.
In other words, a candidate can make the most hard-hitting, negative, critical advertisement in the most questionable taste with no intention of ever putting it on the networks, and have some "insider" then leak it to YouTube to guarantee viewing.
CNN ran a long item about a man who spends every waking minute trailing a Republican rival candidate to the Democrat whose campaign he works for. His goal: to catch the Republican in a gaffe - and he posts the videos to YouTube, where a couple of the clips have already got the candidate into some controversy.
I must have heard the word YouTube at least a dozen times every day either in casual conversations, or in the news. Extraordinary. I cannot remember another net company shooting into the public consciousness in this way - not even Google itself.
What Google will now do about the copyright and content nightmares that it has inherited with its YouTube purchase remains to be seen, but one weblog this week has what purports to be a media insider's take on the deal, including details of the deal itself, contained in a post to a news site.
That post, which you can read at http://tinyurl.com/y87xdj, cannot be verified, of course, but the blogger says he trusts the source of the information. The most interesting aspects of what is reported to have happened were summarised in the San Jose Mercury News weblog Good Morning Silicon Valley which said:
n About $500 million of the $1.65 billion purchase price was held in escrow to fight and settle copyright suits.
n YouTube negotiated deals with a number of potential copyright claimants, giving them an equity stake in the company (whose value was about to skyrocket because of its acquisition by Google) and making it unlikely that they'd file copyright infringement suits against it.
Google negotiated a six-month "stand still" agreement with the content companies, convincing them to "look the other way" for a few months, while it builds tools to police content and track royalties.
Finally, Google asked the content cartel to drop the hammer on YouTube's rivals.
True or not? We will probably never know, as the famously secretive company is unlikely to disclose anything - though it may have to reveal some terms of the acquisition as required by the SEC.
Meanwhile, as the Mercury notes, "if [ the post] is accurate, it demonstrates just how cunning Google is in its business deals and how meticulously it protects its interests".
