14 DAY TRIAL // The Mountain View company Google is now including Metacafe clips on the results provided by video search, creating quite a weird situation for YouTube. As you know, YouTube was acquired in October 2006 for $1.6 billion. At that time, the most important rival was Metacafe, the online video sharing service that is indexed by Google Video starting today. Although the search technology is also providing search results for YouTube, the competition is quite unfair because Google, the owner of YouTube, promotes one of the most powerful rivals of the company.
At this time, YouTube seems to be a little bit lonely as it tries to promote its services without the support of Google, The Godfather. However, YouTube proved us it is a very powerful online video sharing service as it managed to face a huge threat launched by Viacom, the owner of MTV and Comedy Central. As you might know, the company sued Google for copyright infringement after it initially demanded YouTube to remove no more than 100.000 clips from the page. Google agreed, but just after the removal was started, Viacom announced a complaint filed against the search giant, requiring $1 billion in damages.
So, YouTube is lonely and fights for its future. Until now, the online video sharing product was attacked by a lot of companies but none of them managed to represent a real threat for YouTube. Take the example of Sony's eyeVio that was one of the most awaited YouTube killers ever prepared by the Internet companies. Even if the product was launched, Google is still the leader of the category, YouTube still attracting the majority of users. Now, we're all waiting for the exciting project prepared by News Corporation that is especially meant to affect YouTube and attract the same segment of users targeted by the Mountain View company.