This week, Google announced it would be including 3,000 new movie titles for streaming rental through YouTube. Congratulations, but now comes the hard part: differentiating itself from the growing number of similar services including iTunes, CinemaNow, VUDU, Amazon-on-Demand, and even Facebook. Jumping into this already-crowded space would be challenge for any brand, even Google.
But with a host of new titles and the pervasiveness of YouTube across so many platforms, I was ready to extol the effort as a strong move for the company. Sadly, I cannot. In what is becoming typical "Google style" for video offerings, though the potential is real, the execution is lacking.
On the surface, this seems like an excellent opportunity for Google to create a unified video offering across the hundreds of millions of devices it touches; from Android phones to new Honeycomb-enabled tablets, even the lackluster GoogleTV. YouTube's move has the potential to help Google compete directly against iTunes by providing both a robust app market and now a streaming video offering across the device spectrum. This is even how the offering is positioned on the YouTube site. But if market positioning is like a first date, then Google's reality is more like an ex-wife.
Here are the realities:
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"Your YouTube movie will play on Android tablets loaded with Honeycomb." Technically this is a correct statement, provided that the device is a Motorola Xoom from Verizon. Acer Iconia? Asus Transformer? Moto Xoom (Wi-Fi version)? Sorry, not at this time.
While Google talks of a cross-platform strategy for this new movie rental service, in truth the offering is limited to the PC. While we can expect improvement over time, I still have to throw a yellow flag and penalize Google ten yards for (yet another) false start.
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