Sunday, March 18, 2007

Viacom sues Google

Friday in class we discussed the Viacom vs. Google lawsuit. Viacom in suing Google's YouTube for $1 Billion dollars. YouTube is one of the newest technologies on the web. Anyone can just put up a video clip and share it with others. It is not only used for entertainment, but as a great marketing tool as well. Even when we had the interview over Skype with Toby Bloomberg , she told us about the example with Mentos and Diet Coke. It made both companies a lot of money and it was free marketing.

We split the class in half and debated about the Viacom and Google case, and I was defending Google. I think that Google was not trying to hurt Viacom or take money away from them. Google thought they were creating buzz and helping most companies in cases like this one. Anyone can post videos, and Google does its best to monitor that all the vidoes are correctly copyrighted and posted. It is a hard task to do and they are trying to come up with software that can help detect videos that should not be on their site. As soon as Viacom told them about the videos put up from some of the TV shows that Viacom owns, Google took down all the ones they could find. That is the best they could do and they are still in the process of making the system better. To read more about the Viacom/Google case read this.

No comments: