YouTube starts renting movies online in U.S.
Last Updated: Monday, January 25, 2010 | 11:50 AM ET
By Michael Sutherland-Shaw CBC News
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Google Inc.'s YouTube is joining the likes of Apple, Amazon.com and Netflix with a new online movie rental service in the United States.
On its blog, YouTube said it will begin testing the service Friday with five movies from the Sundance Film Festival.
The service is not yet available in Canada, but a Google spokesperson said the company hopes to expand the service to several countries in the future.
Partnering with YouTube? Actor Robert Redford, president of the Sundance Film Festival, at a press conference Thursday in Park City, Utah. (Peter Kramer/Associated Press) YouTube wants to start with a limited amount of content and gradually expand to additional partners from diverse industries as the product improves, the spokesperson said.
"Anything that brings more content to the YouTube community is a good thing," said the blog post.
The announcement marks YouTube's first major push into delivering paid video and movies, rather than supplying videos that can be viewed free in exchange for watching advertisements.
YouTube is confident that its scope of audience and focus on a user-friendly service will make the product stand out among online video providers, said the spokesperson.
This service "will give our partners unprecedented control over the distribution of their work," YouTube said. Suppliers can set the price of their videos and the rental duration.
Payment will be done through Google Checkout. Google and the content supplier will split the revenue, with the partner getting the lion's share.
Bound to happen
Allen Weiner, an analyst at IT research firm Gartner, blogged that YouTube's move into the business of online movie rentals is a natural progression for the site. "Google's media strategy is geared to take dead aim at Apple," said Weiner.
When Google purchased YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion US, many people said it was a bad investment.
But for Google it was an investment in the future as it rebrands itself from a search engine to a leading distributor of consumer-oriented content, including movies, books, newspapers and TV.
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