Google looms...
You want to know how fucked up and insane this digital/internet transition has been for Hollywood? Check this shit out: Even as a 2006 lawsuit between Viacom and YouTube over a billion bucks in licensing damages churns on, long-running YouTube holdout Paramount (division of Viacom) has finally signed a deal to bring bring hundreds of Paramount titles to YouTube’s rental service. Forgive the image, but just imagine two guys facing each other in a two-person circle-jerk who are both using their free hands to listlessly punch each other in the face.
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. If you’re not sure yet if you can beat ’em, join them while you keep trying to beat ’em.
The deal makes sense as virtually every other studio has been playing nice with Google for some time. There studios certainly benefit from the market competition between all the different film delivery platforms, as relying less on any one service for domination gives them more negotiation power. This keeps a ruthless company like Apple from having too much control over how things work, and has fully turned Netflix into a little studio bitch over the last few years.
Google was long a hold-out on delivering content in this manner and even had specific mission statements contradicting that approach to the media market, but with Apple in total control and Amazon gearing up to take them on, the big G was compelled to dive in too. Now the Tubes boast more than nine-thousand titles available for rent. Long live ubiquity.
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Source | THR