Since buying YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006, Google has tried many different ways to turn a profit from the video sharing website. Despite being one of the most visited websites on the Internet and enjoying a userbase that can spend literally hours on its website, watching a reported 10 billion videos in 2009, YouTube has still proved a drain on Google’s limitless resources.

The high bandwidth costs of YouTube are one of its main costs.

Google has now come up with another way that it hopes YouTube will begin to make money, and it’s bad news for companies such as Blockbuster. Yesterday Google launched a new service whereby Internet users in the USA could pay to rent movies from (more…)

As if people didn’t spend enough of their daily lives navigating around YouTube, watching videos of skateboarding dogs or kids laughing, now YouTube has full length TV shows as well.

We don’t mean those awful US shows either; this news is about British TV shows written and shot in good old Blighty. Shows such as Derren Brown, Peep Show, Gordon Ramsay’s F Word and yes, sadly, Hollyoaks are now available to watch on the Google owned video sharing website.

Google has entered into a three year agreement with Channel 4 to show full length TV programmes, which went live yesterday. There are currently 4,000 full length shows in the ‘Shows’ section on YouTube, but more shows will be added in (more…)

Have you ever wanted to be a news reporter, one of those intrepid reporters on the scene with your trusty cameraman, relaying the latest news to a hungry public?

You have? Well you could be in luck, because Google has just launched YouTube Direct, which is aimed at allowing YouTube users to submit videos (not necessarily their own) to local news networks’ websites.

News and media organisations are able to use the YouTube Direct service to request users, members of the general public, to submit YouTube videos that may be of newsworthiness. These videos are then assessed for their relevance by the media organisations and, if found to be of note, are used as news.

Steve Grove, from the news and politics section of YouTube (yes, there is one) added:

People around the world are taking up cameras and covering news in ways big and small – from documenting global events, to filming local town halls in neighborhoods. YouTube Direct empowers news and media organisations to easily connect with these citizen reporters, and use the power of our platform to cover the news better than ever before.

The Huffington Post in the USA tested the service and it is now being rolled out to (more…)

Toymaker Lego has poured cold water on the flames of Spinal Tap, the mock rock band from the film Spinal Tap, who wanted to use a YouTube video featuring Lego versions of them playing their hit ‘Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight’.

The video was created by a 14 year old in 2007, Coleman Hickey. It was uploaded to YouTube and has become a viral success. The video also caught the attention of the band Spinal Tap, who used the video in their recent tour ‘Unwigged and Unplugged’.

The mock band are made up of Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean. Harry Shearer is probably best known for his work on the Simpsons, where he voices many different characters, including barkeeper Mo.

Now the band want to release a DVD of their tour, but permission to use the Lego video footage has been refused by Lego. The Danish company stated:

We love that our fans are so passionate and so creative with our products.

But it had some inappropriate language and the tone wasn’t appropriate for our target audience of (more…)