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Google's Schmidt: Old Media Need YouTube
The Internet giant's CEO said in an interview today that old media companies would soon be faced with the reality that soon "all copyrighted content will be available on virtually all of the sites. ... The growth of YouTube, the growth of online, is so fundamental that these companies are going to be forced to work with and in the Internet."
The interview with Judy Woodruff for Bloomberg TV also quotes Schmidt as saying that finding a way for YouTube to generate revenue was Google's "big project" this year.
YouTube had sales of about $15 million in 2006, according to Bear Stearns & Co. analyst Robert Peck. Schmidt said making deals for the professionally produced content that may accelerate growth is taking longer than he hoped because of difficulty in getting permission from everyone claiming ownership.
"It's more complicated than we anticipated," Schmidt said in the interview ... "It's been more difficult to navigate through the very complicated business structures that the media companies have erected."
