Almost exactly a year ago, the tech press went nuts over rumors that Google was negotiating with movie studios to allow movie rentals via YouTube. At the time, we pointed out how odd it was that none of the press coverage seemed to point out that when Google first launched its Google Video offering, it was all based around video rentals with annoying DRM, and it failed miserably. Instead, everyone went to YouTube, and Google eventually had to buy up the site. And, again, when the company ran a trial earlier this year, reports came out about the fact that very, very few people actually paid. Google and video rentals don't have a very good history.
So again, I'm at a bit of a loss as to why the tech press is pushing a story of rumors that Google is negotiating with the Hollywood studios to do movie rentals via YouTube. It's nearly the identical story to the one this week last year. If I didn't know any better, I'd think that someone at the Financial Times, who "broke" this story, just misread the year on an email somewhere. Perhaps somewhere along the line Google will figure out a way to do movie rentals that work, but the silly fawning over "video rentals" just because (oh my goodness!) Google is supposedly entering the market seems misplaced (especially when no one seems to want to talk about its previous failures). The Financial Times report says that Google's new offering "has caused excitement in Hollywood," but, if anything, that seems like even more evidence that it's doomed to fail.
Separately, I should note that I'm not linking to the FT version of this article, because FT's paywall makes it difficult for most people here to read it. A PR person from the FT sent me the article, but I'm not sure what they expect me to do with it. It doesn't do much good for me to link all of the readers here to an article they can't read, does it?Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
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