The article concludes that Google will have a tougher time cracking the media and TV markets than it did with web search. There will be more obstacles, more lawsuits, and much more cost involved:
There are growing signs that Google is finished with the easy stuff. Its attempts to search other information -- starting with books, TV and scholarly works -- promise to be more costly and time-consuming than the simple Web searches that propelled its first years of growth....TV and video are strategic for Google as it extends beyond web search to achieve its mission to organize the world's information:
The farther Google ventures beyond the Web, the tougher the road gets -- as its dealings with some big TV companies show.
Video is perhaps the most important area for Google's future expansion because it's the medium Americans spend the most time on. Consumers spent 1,625 hours each on average viewing TV, home videos and movies in 2004, compared with 176 hours with the Internet and 108 hours reading books....Google's taking baby steps toward getting into TV by indexing transcripts and showing still-frames and snippets:
Late last year, Google started recording TV programs aired in the San Francisco area without asking permission from program owners. In January Google released a test search service (video.google.com) that lets users search for a keyword -- say, "Michael Jackson" -- and view still images and partial transcripts from TV shows mentioning that keyword.
But big media companies are fighting like hell to retain control:
When television companies found out what Google was up to, some of them hit the roof. Executives at Viacom Inc.'s CBS and Warner Bros. television, a unit of Time Warner Inc., were among those who demanded that Google keep its hands off their content, citing potential copyright violations....
Controversy about "fair use:"
Google says it has the legal right to record the programs and display the search results without permission because in this instance it is only showing still images and text excerpts. But Jennifer Feikin, the director of Google Video, says the company will remove any show from the search service if the content owner asks....Fight for "respect" translates to demand for vigorish:
Some TV executives who resisted say they may eventually work with Google, if negotiations yield attractive terms. But Google "didn't show proper respect for us as potential partners," says Larry Kramer, president of digital media at CBS. "We're not just going to give this away for free...."
Jeff Zucker, president of the NBC Universal Television Group, believes Google has a lot to prove. "We have yet to see a business proposition that recognizes what content providers bring to the table," he says. "We need to be adequately compensated and we need to be certain our content is protected" from piracy.
Google TV will cost a lot more to achieve than web search:
What Google wants to do will be more labor-intensive. Its Web searches have been mostly automated, keeping staffing down and profit margins fat. Now it may have to undertake the costly conversion of older TV programs and other material into digital form, although new material is increasingly available digitally. It has already begun employing humans to screen content such as video for objectionable material.
It all comes down to a copyright fight:
Google's competitors are better positioned to win partnerships with major content rights holders:More problematic is the issue of copyrights. As Google moves onto turf where companies are more protective of their intellectual property, it faces the prospect of getting sued or slogging through negotiations with thousands of rights holders....
A traditional Google search brings up a list of Web sites with roughly 20 words from each site. Those excerpts are generally thought not to violate anyone's intellectual-property rights. Once users click on a link, they have moved to someone else's site and Google isn't responsible for what they're viewing. But with other types of content, some companies are beginning to challenge even Google's display of small snippets. Courts generally permit "fair use" of excerpts such as quotations from a book in a book review, but when it comes to areas such as online video the law remains blurry....
Google agrees that it needs copyright holders' permission if it wants to display certain kinds of content, such as the actual video of TV shows. But in attempting to obtain such permission, Google could be at a disadvantage to more experienced rivals both in the Internet world and beyond. Search rivals Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have years of experience negotiating with major content owners. Yahoo's chief executive, Terry Semel, is a former co-chief executive of Warner Bros. and has filled the Internet company's top ranks with Hollywood veterans. Microsoft co-owns the MSNBC cable channel with NBC.Internet TV is coming. Can Google dominate TV like it's dominated the web? Google's Larry Page laid down the gauntet when he promised to do for TV what Google's done for the web. That's going to pit Google against some powerful players:
Google's video-search quest is moving it toward possible competition with the cable-TV industry. Comcast Corp., the cable company with the most U.S. subscribers, has invested heavily to develop search technologies for subscribers who use its video-on-demand service as well as its high-speed Internet portal.... Instead of traditional channel-flipping or on-screen guides, TV viewers might use something more similar to Internet search to find the programs they want to watch.Google's "stunning approach" offended partners:
Google started talking to TV executives about its video plans last year, say Google and the TV companies. Discussions intensified in meetings in December and early January in cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Washington.Schmidt sheds a little light on the possible use of the new Google payments system. He seems to confirm what I'd speculated last week that Google is opening a new revenue stream -- payments from consumers. This will be critical, since some content isn't supported by an advertising model:
Then Google surprised some broadcasters by telling them it was already building a digital database of their programs, including text transcripts gathered via the caption feed for the hearing impaired. Rick Cotton, general counsel at General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal, says Google's "stunning approach" brought talks to a halt. "This is not the way one normally does business whether you're an old company or a young one," he says.
Among others, the Warner Bros. studio and the producers of "Dr. Phil," a program owned by Viacom's King World unit, wrote or called Google to demand that it keep their content off the service, people from the companies say. Google's Ms. Feikin says it removed programs at the request of a few TV content owners, but she declines to name them. NBC Universal sent a stern letter that stopped just short of a formal cease-and-desist letter, says a person close to NBC. NBC's letter said it "strongly objected" to the use of its content for the test service, this person says, and reminded Google of NBC's legal rights.
Google released a test version of Google Video on Jan. 25. By that point some content owners, including News Corp.'s Fox News, the Public Broadcasting Service and C-Span, had given Google explicit approval to use their programs for the search function. Others hadn't, but Google used their programs anyway.
Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, acknowledges that searching video and some other media is more complicated than past search tasks. "It is a fact that we have to negotiate with the rights holder and that's an incremental cost to what we did three or four years ago," he says, adding that "this will be a major story for Google for years." Google could recoup some costs if consumers pay to view video, he says.
The article concludes with more blather from Eric Schmidt:
Google's chief executive, Mr. Schmidt, calls Google's mission a long-term one. "It will take, current estimate, 300 years to organize all of the world's information," he says.