Monday, October 09, 2006

Impact on travel of a Google/YouTube deal

Reports today suggest Yahoo!, Time Warner and even Walt Disney are – surprise, surprise –interested in making bids for the video-sharing giant YouTube.

The rumour mill is likely to be working overtime in the next few days, especially if – as some reports predictGoogle makes an official bid for the 18-month old YouTube as early as this week.

John Batelle is already nicknaming the deal GooTube.

Still, Google and YouTube are, predictably, remaining silent over the news, which broke late on Friday night.

An email yesterday from a senior travel industry figure said the deal would probably not have much impact on the sector, only that a vastly stronger Google - as a result of its ability to expand its empire through video - would cement its dominance/influence (take your pick) over the industry for years to come.

Summary: if Google was looking – in a very minute sense, of course – to be losing some ground in travel as users turn to vertical search engines and direct with suppliers, then this would hand travel advertisers a massive new outlet for pay-per-click campaigns.

Fun(ds) and games...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

spot on.

there cetainly are questions as to how travel companies will be able to target both the new breed of consumers coming through and those that spend a large majority of their surfing time watching videos (right).

group PPC deals with Google across search, maps, base and earth would be an even stronger proposition for travel advertisers.

Anonymous said...

and the prospect of google becoming even more powerful doesn't scare any of you people?

Anonymous said...

surely it should be.....yougle?