Is GooTube building a Video ISP?

Alan, bandwidth costs have fallen to a level that the advertising revenue more than subsidizes the cost of the network. i believe we are in the very early stages of a true 'gloabl village' as Marshall McCluhan called it. The cost structure for a traditional ISP like PacBell DSL..errr AT&T, comcast, etc to supply services to the residence is around $40 per month but trends downward as you grow because you get cost scale....at least in the network world, the more you buy the less it costs...wish power markets were the same

goog is placing a bet, and a very calculated one, that the revenue that can be produced from marketing to(advertisting) and selling or providing for free their own services to their future isp customers will more than offset the costs of a purchase.

what this provides them is an end to end solution for delivering customized content and adverting to each and every one of the people using their service. this delivery platform is alway on and knows where you go, what you type, where you live, who your friends are, what files you have downloaded, what you look like, and whatever else they add on to their services. So when Johnson & Johnson or GE or Proctor & Gamble or Coca Cola or Pepsi is planning their media buys for the next year do you think they'll purchase advertisements on radio, television, print of the 4th network(Google)? based on the ability to target a specific population that has certain attributes you desire, the choice is clear...you pick google. Why? because you know that your marketing msg is going to a qualified prospect as opposed to the traditional 'shotgun' approach. plus, you can get results in realtime and tweak your msg if its not working in real time. with the other three media you are somewhat ratholed into trusting some third party for ratings that may or may not even reach the people that you want it to. by the time you figure this out a slew of things can happen...some good some bad but why chance it when you don't need to.

At the end of the day, Google is building a traditional media killer and the funny thing is..actually not really funny but kinda, that the writing is on the wall but nobody seems to believe it. I do. @Home Network had this vision but couldn't pull it off because the cable co's couldn't get their heads out of their rear to see the opportunity that was sitting right in front of them.

time will tell but if i were a betting man(i stopped betting/gambling a couple years ago), i would be buying puts on yhoo for years to come and calls on goog for years to come as well. goog has deals in place or in the works with the producers of original content to allow their users access to that content. if i'm a content producer where would i want my content to be seen? ex. let's say you are the producer of CSI Miami and goog offers you the ability to place your content on their network so that it can be viewed by anyone, anywhere, anytime and offers a revenue share or some other creative structure around it such that you know your worst case scenario beforehand. simple choice right? sure abc or cbs might offer an upfront fee in the form of $$ per show but the audience is limited, the timeslot is finite and in order for someone to view it, they have to purchase cable tv or satellite or whatever whereas on the google network you content would be globally accessible and the broadband access which replaces the cable or satellite tv service, is free to the masses. additionally you can develop complimentary services that engauge your viewership such that you are able to really develop a community around you content as opposed to content around a community.

so if you want to see some proof that goog is infact building an isp, go to their job page and type 'isp' and see what comes up as matches to your search

Alan,

Well now we know there are at least two of us

I think Larry and Sergey were realizing how big they were getting in terms of the scope of their products that they had to slow it down because it is just too much and unprecedented range of potential that it will draw probably end up being broken up down the road because holy moly, we thought AT&T was big when they were broken up....look out because Google already has a much deeper ability to control what you see and who you do it with that if you really think about it really does have the reach and ability to have a huge impact on the global economy.