October 21, 2006 | Filed under: Internet TV

Fortune is reporting a real reason Google bought YouTube:

"Google executives confirm that the company bought YouTube in part to better position itself for getting into the business of selling traditional television advertising."

It could be the final significant piece of a puzzle that currently looks something like this:

• Hardware / software now cheap and simple to use for making great quality video content.
• Flash video creating a format for almost everybody to be tooled-up ready to view video.
• GooTube, Revver, and the rest training users to get into watching video on their computers

Missing is:

• [Insert solution here] as a revenue engine for content creators to make a living from their efforts.

With this final piece of the puzzle, an entire ecosystem could, theoretically, be in place. 

But I am still wondering:

• Will monetised videos mean more copyright cases? The case would be stronger against them for sure... Expect to see lots more copyright filtering in place.
• Will monetised videos with no revenue to the people that made them (say LonelyGirl15) make creators angry? Presumably they would share the revenue as Revver does.
• Testing and optimising TV-style ads on the type of content we see on YouTube today does not necessarily help Robert Scoble or Revision3 who are trying to make 'shows' rather than muck around with 'clips'.
• If 'shows' get enough viewers, will it be possible to build a content business to rival NBC as Revision3 are trying to do? Will content businesses be able to earn enough revenue from the Google product? I guess Google did get that right with adsense so we just have to wait and see how a Google video ad eco-system works.

If this is why Google bought YouTube AND they have a video adsense AND they balance the eco-system carefully it will be very interesting indeed.

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