All it takes is a few quick searches on Youtube to realize that one of its biggest content supporters is Disney.
In the world of Youtube, there are two kinds of content providers. On the one side, there are companies that are content nazis, who absolutely refuse to let any of their material appear on the video sharing site. Even if someone is just posting a video blog and it happens that there’s a TV on in the background playing the company’s content, it will get upset.
We’ll call those companies the “Viacoms” of the Youtube landscape.
And on the other side, we have the Disneys. Disney has forged a deal with Youtube that gives users full access to create their own videos with copyrighted Disney content. So if a little girl wants to sing her own version of Somewhere Out There, Disney is perfectly fine with letting her post that on Youtube.
Beyond that, though, Disney now also has uploaded entire episodes of its TV shows, letting users watch some of their favorite shows for free (with ad-supported content played at the outset, of course).
This comes at a time when a lot of Disney programming has just been pulled from Netflix – not from Disney itself, but from Starz Play, which had favorable licensing rights from Disney.
Google is trying to make Youtube more of a “sticky” site, meaning users come there for a purpose – to watch a movie or TV show, or Web series, or something. While it’s nice that Youtube gets a bazillion hits every day, Google would rather those be loyal visitors rather than one-offs who happen to have a boring day at the office or were just forwarded a 20-second clip.
