The company tries to pay off the investment

Mar 5, 2007 15:38 GMT  ·  By

YouTube is the video service acquired by Google in October 2006 for $1.6 billion, representing one of the most impressive investments ever made for an Internet company. Since the Google acquisition, YouTube was continuously brought in the spotlights because more and more companies are suing the search giant for publishing videos without authorization. The most known lawsuit was filed by Daniela Cicarelli, Ronaldo's ex-wife, who sued the company for uploading movies without her approval. At that time, a Brazilian court closed YouTube Brazil and ordered the company to remove all the videos with the model from the official page of the product.

Another important hit into the YouTube's reputation was conducted by Viacom, the owner of well known television programs such as Comedy Central or MTV that demanded YouTube to remove almost 100.000 clips from the website because they consider Google receive praises for the content provided by other publishers without paying for it. Although the removal was quite impressive, YouTube managed to remain the leader in its category and even increased its online traffic.

After the Viacom removal was finished, YouTube started a powerful campaign to increase the number of videos they provide by making several partnerships with numerous media companies. The first one was Chelsea FC, followed by NBA and a few days ago, BBC. Using the BBC partnership, YouTube will create 3 online channels focused on the distribution of news and entertainment videos.

Today, PC Advisor reported the video service made even more partnerships than the most popular ones but the company avoided to talk about them. "A spokesperson for YouTube told us: "While we can't talk about future plans or development we are working with content providers large and small to develop a YouTube presence and to provide our community with the broadest possible scope of content," PC Advisor reported.