Back in 2006, Microsoft had a real shot at acquiring YouTube, but failed to do so simply because of the inherent intellectual property issues and the fact that Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer failed see a monetization model implemented in the viral video website. Instead, YouTube went to Google for over $1.5 billion and, in February 2008, it served approximately 3.5 billion videos to viewers in the US. Microsoft attempted to step into the limelight with SoapBox, a YouTube clone that eventually ended up being melted into MSN video, and a couple of months back it delivered only just under 300 million videos to the U.S. audience, according to comScore.

"In February, Google Sites once again ranked as the top U.S. video property with nearly 3.6 billion videos viewed (35.4% share of all videos), gaining 1.1 share points versus the previous month. YouTube.com accounted for 96 percent of all videos viewed at Google Sites. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 586 million videos (5.8%), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 293 million (2.9%) and Microsoft Sites with 293 million (2.9%)," comScore stated.

Microsoft is not an insignificant player on the online video market, but at the same time, the Redmond company has nothing on main rival Google. The Mountain View-based search giant attracted an audience of no less than 81.7 million in February, just from the U.S., 80.4 million viewers just on YouTube, with each person spending online an estimated 109.4 minutes. By contrast only 27 million viewers went to a Microsoft video hotspot and spent online an average time of 18.8 minutes.

"Nearly 135 million U.S. Internet users spent an average of 204 minutes per person viewing online video in February. Google Sites also attracted the most viewers (81.8 million), where they spent an average of 109 minutes per person watching video in February. Fox Interactive attracted the second most viewers (55.7 million), followed by Yahoo! Sites (37.1 million) and Microsoft Sites (27.1 million). ABC.com attracted the tenth largest viewing audience, and its viewers exhibited heavy engagement averaging 51 minutes of online viewing per person," comScore.