14 DAY TRIAL // YouTube was acquired by Google in October 2006 for $1.6 billion and was quickly brought in the first position of the top online video sharing services. Now, YouTube is still the leader but is more and more threatened by other companies that are continuously making alliances to dethrone the Google product. The first alliance was made by Viacom and Joost and was announced just after the search giant was sued by the owner of MTV and Comedy Central. At that time, Viacom tried to make Google envious by signing a deal with Joost, a platform able to distribute their content. Although YouTube chose the easier way to reply to the deal, it attracted the users' attention, the search giant sustained the number of visitors was boosted just after the Viacom removal.
Then, several little companies announced their plans to create similar YouTube services but only some of them managed to appear online. One of them is GodTube, a video service with a different goal, aiming to attract Christians to their website. The platform is quite similar with Google's but it tries to promote kindness and display sermons or other Church related content. YouTube replied with a similar move by releasing a separate channel meant to attract the same category of users with this kind of content.
Today, YouTube was threatened again, this time Jalipo being the service that wants to crash the Google online video sharing service. Although its developers sustain their product is somehow different from YouTube, its goal is also video uploading and sharing it with other members of the service. As far as I can see, YouTube is more powerful because it is accessible for free, Jalipo requiring an account for every user that wants to view a clip.
Although it's not quite clear if YouTube will be dethroned sooner or later, only one thing is obvious: Google does an incredible job with its online video sharing service and the users from all over the world are really pleased with it.