YouTube’s director of content partnerships, Jordan Hoffner, has been hard at work signing on premium content providers like CBS, HBO, Showtime, C-SPAN and MGM. According to reports of a speech he made this week, the company’s No. 1 priority in 2009 is to get that content in front of viewers.

“‘YouTube is a great place for premium content,” Multichannel News quoted Hoffner as saying. “But we need to do a better job of creating areas where the user can go and know what they are going to get.”

Hoffner was speaking to a nagging problem we’ve mentioned many times on NewTeeVee: YouTube’s interface is set up for video blogs and virals, not premium content. It’s flat-out impossible, for example, to find those full episodes from CBS. Recent moves such as widescreen players and tougher policies on “sexually suggestive” content are starting points, but the site needs to radically redesign how it exposes and promotes premium video — things competitor Hulu brags about obsessing over.

When Google bought YouTube, users worried that having a corporate owner would suck the soul out of the site. But two years later, YouTube continues to be a chaotic melange, only bigger and broader than ever before. The site had 344 million global unique visitors in October.

As the world’s largest user-generated content site, there’s no such thing as “the YouTube community” in any kind of monolithic sense. That was made especially clear at last month’s YouTube Live, an event ostensibly aimed at “giving back” to YouTube’s constituency. The company flew in hundreds of YouTube users to the San Francisco event to both perform on stage and film video from the audience. Tickets were free, and the whole thing was streamed live. It was a ton of fun — and also totally, utterly weird. The stage ended up being a confining and unfitting environment for many of the acts, and the mix of legit stars with indie faves felt random at best.

Nick Vitale was invited to YouTube Live by Google, part of its new effort to make YouTube accessible but still quirky for newcomers — he and former The 9 star Maria Sansone were co-hosts of Poptub, a Pepsi-sponsored variety video show highlighting YouTube content and content creators being distributed through Google’s new Google Content Network. Once he arrived in San Francisco for YouTube Live, however, Vitale was fired from the gig and told he wasn’t able to attend the event (fittingly, he made a video about the firing from just outside the premises). Meanwhile, Sansone and crew had exclusive insider access to film the entirety of the event (and her YouTube Live wrap-up video is the show’s most successful episode ever, with a nearly half a million views).

Vitale admitted in a phone interview with NewTeeVee that he gave Poptub reason to fire him. “There was definitely some times when I could have been more professional,” he said. But he contended that he was hired precisely because he wasn’t “professional” — he got into video hosting via sketch comedy, and announcing surfing contests and the Harlem Globetrotters tour. Vitale said he felt like Poptub was struggling to find its way — and changing its expectations of him in the process — partly due to corporate influence from Pepsi and Google.

But rather than get into the grumblings of a fired employee (who, it should be said, maintains he harbors no ill will and hopes the show is successful), I bring up Vitale because — much like the trouble finding CBS episodes and the awkward (but fun!) YouTube Live — the story of Poptub is emblematic of YouTube’s growing pains. Poptub is being given every resource it needs to succeed, but it’s having trouble combining high gloss and grassroots.

Which brings us back to YouTube’s to-do list: If premium content is next year’s top priority, what about this year’s stated goal?

YouTube’s highest priority for 2008, according to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, was figuring out “the perfect solution of how to make money.”

Despite a flurry of recent ad product launches, we doubt the site can legitimately check that task off its list. But Schmidt may have been putting the cart ahead of the horse; before you can figure out how to make money, you need to figure out what you’re selling.

And Hoffner’s comment reveals another lapse in self-awareness: YouTube’s strength is not premium, nor should it be. Rather, YouTube has a tremendous (and surely monetizable) opportunity to show that premium and user-generated can coexist. All they need to do is figure out how.

This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com.

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ComputerWorld asks the question “which Google projects will bite the dust?” Well, are we taking any bets? Should we start a pool or what? If that's the case, I got $5 on Google Checkout biting it in the second round of cuts.

Thanks to the recession, Google has begun killing projects that haven't made it financially, with CEO Eric Schmidt warning the company will eliminate "dark matter" projects that "haven't really caught on" and "aren't really that exciting." Two are already on the chopping block, with more to follow.

Comments

Thanks to the recession, Google has begun killing projects that havent made it financially, with CEO Eric Schmidt warning the company will eliminate dark matter projects that havent really caught on and arent really that exciting. Two are already on the chopping block, with more to follow. pa href=http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/41Y3HijmFPEJcXdNPzPEV7fqJwI/aimg src=http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/41Y3HijmFPEJcXdNPzPEV7fqJwI/i border=0 ismap=true //a/pimg src=http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digg/container/technology/popular/~4/J8AyfL_JlQc height=1 width=1 /br[a href=http://blogs.computerworld.com/which_google_projects_will_bite_the_dust title=linklink/a] [a href=http://feeds.digg.com/~r/digg/container/technology/popular/~3/J8AyfL_JlQc/Which_Google_projects_will_bite_the_dust title=moremore/a]

Le géant de la recherche sur Internet Google met un frein aux dépenses sur de nouveaux projets, selon The Wall Street Journal.

Eric Schmidt aurait déclaré rester prudent et faire comme si le pire allait encore arriver dans cette crise économique.

Le géant de l’internet va écourter le développement de la “matière noire”, dit E. Schmidt. Ce sont les projets qui n’ont pas encore vraiment pris dans le moule et qui intéressent peu.

Les bons vieux jours où Google fournissait à un ingénieur 20 employés pour développer une application sont bien loin.

“Quand le cycle sera de retour... nous pourrons financer de brillantes visions,” ajoute Eric Schmidt.

Trip Chowdhry, spécialiste chez Global Equities Research, dit s’attendre à ce que Google publie des revenus de l’ordre de 15,71 milliards de dollars cette année, 15,23 milliards l’an prochain et 14,57 milliards en 2010.

L’Inq
AP

Traduction et adaptation d’un article de Nick Farrell pour INQ.

psmallNick Farrell a href="http://www.theinquirer.net/"the Inquirer/a, Thursday 4 December 2008. 08:22:00/small/ppi Belt tightens another notch /i/ppINTERNET SEARCH GIANT Google is pulling back spending on new projects according to The Wall Street Journal. Google chief executive Eric Schmidt was quoted as saying that the company had to behave as if the worst was going to happen during the economic crisis..../pimg width='1' height='1' src='http://feeds.theinquirer.net/c/554/f/7127/s/27f080e/mf.gif' border='0'/div class='mf-viral'table border='0'trtd valign='middle'a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/sendemail2.html?title=Google to cut back on new projectslink=http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/12/04/google-cut-back-projects" target="_blank"img src="http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif" border="0" //a/tdtd valign='middle'a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=Google to cut back on new projectslink=http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/12/04/google-cut-back-projects" target="_blank"img src="http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif" border="0" //a/td/tr/table/divbr/br/a href="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/25853561981/u/89/f/7127/c/554/s/41879566/a2.htm"img src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/25853561981/u/89/f/7127/c/554/s/41879566/a2.img" border="0"//a

When Google pulled out of its proposed search advertising deal with Yahoo last month, it was chief legal counsel David Drummond who made the announcement. He cited concerns of a “protracted legal battle,” but only now do we learn that the Justice Department was only three hours away from filing an antitrust lawsuit to block the deal. Sandy Litvack, the prosecutor hired by the justice Department to head up the case, tells Am Law Daily:

We were going to file the complaint at a certain time during the day. We told them we were going to file the complaint at that time of day. Three hours before, they told us they were abandoning the agreement.

. . . It would have ended up also alleging that Google had a monopoly and that [the advertising pact] would have furthered their monopoly.

When it came down to the wire, Google blinked. It was the right move. But Google is on notice that the DOJ considers it a near-monopoly, and will treat it as such if need be. At least until the Obama Administration takes over. Then Google CEO Eric Schmidt can remind them how hard he campaigned for them to win.

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pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=482098a2796c7a2300f553e6maxX=389maxY=258" border="0" alt="Eric Schmidt 1.jpg" title="Eric Schmidt 1.jpg" width="389" height="258" /Did Google really walk away from the Yahoo search deal because of the "risk" of litigation, as Google suggested at the time? No. Because of theem certainty/em of it. When Google walked, the Justice Department was three hours away from suing it for violating the Sherman Act:/p p style="padding-left: 30px;"a href="http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2008/12/hogans-litvack.html"AmLaw: /a"We were going to file the complaint at a certain time during the day," says [Sandy Litvack, the bulldog litigator who the goverment brought in to handle the case]. "We told them we were going to file the complaint at that time of day. Three hours before, they told us they were abandoning the agreement.".../p p style="padding-left: 30px;"strongThe never-filed government complaint would have charged that the agreement violated Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act... /strong"It would have ended up strongalso alleging that Google had a monopoly and that [the advertising pact] would have furthered their monopoly,"/strong Litvack says./p p style="padding-left: 30px;"strongThe complaint would have sought a preliminary injunction to stop the agreement from going forward/strong. "strongThe fact that we filed a lawsuit would not by itself have stopped them," he says. "We would have had to get an injunction from the court, and we would have sought that."/strong/p pAfter Google walked away, the DOJ released a href="http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2008/November/08-at-981.html"a statement /asaying that it had informed the companies it was planning to file suit. The release did not specify how close Google came to getting sued, however, and Google's explanation for why it walked didn't mention the government's explicit intention:/p p style="padding-left: 30px;"a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/google-walks-away-from-yahoo-search-deal"Google counsel David Drummond on November 5: /a[A]fter four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement,strong it's clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement. Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle/strong but also damage to relationships with valued partners./p pAnd remember who was behind the effort to get regulators to block the deal? That's right: Microsoft. Payback for Google's (currently successful) attempt to break up a possible Microsoft-Yahoo deal./p p style="padding-left: 30px;"a href="http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2008/12/hogans-litvack.html"AmLaw:/a Litvack acknowledges that a href="http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx"Microsoft Corporation/a and other companies lobbied the department to block the agreement, both publicly and and in private meetings. Litvack insists, though, that Microsoft's lobbying had no bearing on his recommended course of action or on the division's ultimate decision./p p(Via a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/28037962/site/14081545?__source=yahoo|headline|quote|text|par=yahoo"Jim Goldman at CNBC/a)/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/J4HjbT9GE42sPVfToFXAKz_tOwM/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/J4HjbT9GE42sPVfToFXAKz_tOwM/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=OJH5NMt9"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=OJH5NMt9" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=vlxSw5LT"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=hCXjojGr"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=Fb3OwzSo"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=Fb3OwzSo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=5KRPeozg"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=BUe4EcZR"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=m3n9gTiV"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=Q7mWJnvP"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/2lV3gDUqP-c" height="1" width="1"/

pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=49368ad014b9b9c000f32a1cmaxX=240maxY=180" border="0" alt="GoogleEngineersFlickr.jpg" title="GoogleEngineersFlickr.jpg" width="240" height="180" /Google was never quite the engineer company its public relations and human resources teams made it out to be, but as Google gets serious about cutting costs, that myth of a decentralized company run by its engineers -- which was, in fact, more true at Google than most anywhere else -- grows ever fainter./p pFor example, remember Google's 20% rule? The one that allowed engineers to spend a fifth of their time on any project of their choosing?/p pGoogle CEO Eric Schimdt's not even pretending its real anymore. Here's the money quote from a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122826503489174369.html?mod=testMod"the emWall Street Journal/em's rehash/a of Google's cost cutting campaign:/p p style="padding-left: 30px;""We have to behave as though we don't know" what's going to happen, says Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt. The company will curtail the "dark matter," he says, projects that "haven't really caught on" and "aren't really that exciting." He says the company is "not going to give" an engineer 20 people to work with on certain experimental projects anymore. "When the cycle comes back," he says, "we will be able to fund his brilliant vision."/p pGoogle's finally getting smart about allocating human resources and capital. Here's what that means in the short term:/p ul listrongA sense of urgency about diversifying the business/strong, which means new priorities include display ads, mobile ads and enterprise software.br / br / /li listrongNon-revenue generating products will starve/strong if they're not killed altogether. Project the company is just "fiddling with," Schmidt told the WSJ will get "will get "naturally smaller as people get plucked off."br / br / /li listrongReigning confusion./strong One Google current operations manager told the Journal: "It's not exactly clear where that bottom line is now. I don't think they know that either."br / br / /li listrongDispirited engineers./strong Google no longer belongs to the dreamy engineers and it's going to make them feel bad. Quoth the Journal: "Some engineers complain they can no longer tap the employees and machines they need to develop their ideas. This is no small issue among elite programmers, many of whom joined the company for the chance to work on such projects, according to current and former employees." br / br / /li listrongCramped quarters./strong Google will close offices in Dallas and Denver.br / br / /li listrongShutting off services/strong. Search sandbox SearchMash, virtual world Lively and Google Page Creator will soon be gone. Google Audio Indexing and Google Notebook could follow.br / br / /li listrongMore grunt work./strong Google wants to "significantly" cut its 10,000 its contractor workforce and somebody has to pick up the slack./li /ul pstrongSee Also:/strongbr /a href="../../2008/12/analyst-google-revenues-will-shrink-till-2010"Analyst: Google Revenues Will Shrink Through 2010 (GOOG)/a/p pemPhoto: a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/martl/"heartbeaz/a/em/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/BzXnDzVKiHF6zgl2tf7YN5K3ChU/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/BzXnDzVKiHF6zgl2tf7YN5K3ChU/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=XmWD4eRa"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=XmWD4eRa" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=lTa8Hl8i"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=Aed7roJ9"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=tfC8lN7u"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=tfC8lN7u" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=FI2XZbt7"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=XH6hlZlr"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=aL0Z2JDG"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=EXj8iuBF"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/qU-Ti-ZVFNQ" height="1" width="1"/