It’s been alleged that when Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion it did so while making a “deliberate, calculated business decision” to profit from copyright infringement and “to use the threat of copyright infringement to try to coerce rights owners like Viacom into licensing their content on Google’s terms”.
Viacom apparently wanted YouTube before Google swooped in. Revenge may be sweet but god it’s taking a while.
The allegation comes in the last round of a Viacom $1 billion copyright lawsuit battle with Google which has been rumbling on since 2007. The search giant has responded by saying the allegations have nothing to do with the lawsuit and indeed have criticised Viacom for “trying to litigate this case in the press”.
According to reports on Cnet and VentureBeat the main document that Viacom highlights is a “content acquisition strategy update” from 2006, where Google Video team members cast a critical eye on the competition. In this document it apparently tells how Google felt that: “YouTube’s business model is completely sustained by pirated content. They are completely at the mercy of companies not responding with [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] requests”.
The presentation includes another statement about YouTube that raises questions about Google’s motivations for buying the site: “The YouTube business model is also not monetisable. They are an AdSense publisher, so we have a good sense of their rate of monetization.”
Viacom’s allegation that Google planning to coerce content owners comes from the wording of a business strategy document from the same period, where Google said, “We may be able to coax or force access to viral premium content… use threat to get standard deal sign-up.”
VentureBeat notes that older court briefings from Google claimed that Viacom was actually interested in acquiring YouTube before Google swooped in. Google said the documents Viacom are pointing to for evidence “aren’t new” and that they are “taken out of context and have nothing to do with this lawsuit”.
All of this mud slinging comes a few weeks after Google accused Viacom of uploading its own content to YouTube before suing in the first place. The billion dollar battle rolls on.
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