Enough About GoogTube. Google Totally Hearts Apple

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on October 10, 2006

Yeah yeah. So Google ponied up for YouTube. So what else is new?

Well there is a rumored Apple angle in all this. Last month Macrumors picked up chatter about Google supplying video to Apple’s forthcoming iTV device once it bows early next year. Certainly owning YouTube will make that easier, because Google Video, for all its finer points, certainly hasn’t floated to the top of the Web video Zeitgeist. It certainly would be cool to surf YoutTube offerings from the comfort of the couch.

Meanwhile, Google has started touting its Mac-friendliness in a new “Official Google Mac Blog” which in turn points to a download site for various Google-oriented Dashboard widgets and so on. Nice to see in the wake of Eric Schmidt becoming an Apple director last month.

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Reader Comments

John Lockwood

October 11, 2006 07:20 AM

YouTube currently uses flash for streaming videos (bleh) and as such is unlikely to be compatible with the iTV.

Google Video also initially uses flash for its videos but many of them also have the option to download as an iPod friendly MPEG4 file (they are still all currently in the old smaller 320x240 resolution rather than the newer super duper 640x480 iPod resolution).

So the acquisition by Google could potentially mean YouTube videos might eventually become more iTV and iPod friendly.

Note: Microsoft's MSNVideoDownloads is of course not Mac or iPod or iTV friendly in that it uses WMV. Hell one could argue it is not even Windows friendly since WMV is a ghastly massively over DRM'd format.

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A blog on the daily doings of Apple and the many companies in its orbit, with insight and analysis by two longtime Apple-watchers BusinessWeek Senior Writer Peter Burrows and BusinessWeek.com Senior Technology Writer Arik Hesseldahl.

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