BEIJING, March 10 -- Google Inc Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt has said media companies will someday see the light because to lure viewers, they have no choice but to put their TV shows and movies on video sites such as his firm's YouTube.
"Eventually all of the copyrighted content will be available on virtually all of the sites," said Schmidt, who is tussling over copyrights with Viacom Inc. "The growth of YouTube, the growth of online, is so fundamental that these companies are going to be forced to work with and in the Internet," Schmidt said in an interview at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.
The success of YouTube has networks divided on whether the benefits of putting up clips outweigh the risk of cannibalizing their own efforts. CBS Corp this week called YouTube a "huge promotional vehicle." Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman said unauthorized videos on the site hurt his company.
Google, the most-used Internet search engine, acquired YouTube for 1.65 billion U.S. dollars in November. More than 133 million people visited YouTube in January, 14 times more than a year ago, according to Reston, Virginia-based Web-use tracker ComScore Networks Inc.
The site appeals to viewers with the breadth of its content, some of which has been posted without permission. That's prompted media companies to cry foul. Viacom demanded the removal of 100,000 clips last month, Bloomberg News said.
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YouTube had sales of about 15 million dollars in 2006, according to Bear Stearns & Co analyst Robert Peck. (File Photo)
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"Any smart-thinking media company is going to need to work with them," said Allen Weiner, an analyst at Gartner Inc, a market research firm in Connecticut.
The problem is that YouTube hasn't fully developed a way to generate revenue, and users may tune out if ads run before clips, Weiner said.
That leaves Schmidt, 51, searching for a way to generate money from the site, which he lists as Google's "big project" this year.
YouTube had sales of about 15 million dollars in 2006, according to Bear Stearns & Co analyst Robert Peck. Schmidt said making deals for the professionally prepared content that may accelerate growth is taking longer than he hoped because of difficulty in getting permission from everyone claiming ownership.
"It's more complicated than we a n t i c i p a t e d," Schmidt said in the interview on "Conversations with Judy Woodruff." "It's been more difficult to navigate through the very complicated business structures that the media companies have erected."
Google faces challenges from media companies such as News Corp and a film distributor run by billionaire Mark Cuban.
Both went to court to force Google to identify users who posted TV shows and films without permission on both YouTube and Google Video. In February, the company acceded to Viacom's request to remove its content.
(Source: Shanghai Daily/Agencies)
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