John Paczkowski

Recent Posts by John Paczkowski

Coming Soon from Google: Pay-Per-Tube

It’s taken the better part of a year, but Google’s discussions with major movie studios about a YouTube pay-per-view movie service are coming to fruition. The Financial Times claims that by year’s end we could see YouTube transform from an online destination for user-generated content into a full-fledged, international on-demand movie service.

Rental prices haven’t yet been set, but sources tell the FT that newer film titles would cost about $5–a bit more than the $.99 to $3.99 YouTube charges for the older films currently available in its fledgling pay-per-view catalog. Presumably, there will be some sort of integration with Google’s forthcoming Google TV platform, though details are scant.

If the company does manage to roll such a service out, we’ll soon see YouTube going head-to-head with Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes, Netflix (NFLX) and Hulu–and in a big way. YouTube’s reach is already quite broad–with the right deals in place Google (GOOG) could bring a powerful pay-per-view service to the desktop and mobile Web very quickly. “Google and YouTube are a global phenomenon with a hell of a lot of eyeballs–more than any cable or satellite service,” an executive with knowledge of the plans told the FT. “They’ve talked about how many people they could steer to this…it’s a huge number.”

Previously:

Twitter’s Tanking

December 30, 2013 at 6:49 am PT

2013 Was a Good Year for Chromebooks

December 29, 2013 at 2:12 pm PT

BlackBerry Pulls Latest Twitter for BB10 Update

December 29, 2013 at 5:58 am PT

Apple CEO Tim Cook Made $4.25 Million This Year

December 28, 2013 at 12:05 pm PT

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Just as the atom bomb was the weapon that was supposed to render war obsolete, the Internet seems like capitalism’s ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again. It’s especially hopeless for those whose work is easily digitized and accessed free of charge.

— Author Tim Kreider on not getting paid for one’s work