Google's Still on Top

Microsoft, Google's chief rival on the Internet, embraced the NBC-News Corp. announcement on Wednesday. The company has also made a point of touting its respect for copyright law.

"That's not a coincidence," says Bernoff. "Microsoft wants to get behind anything that they feel can stop Google, and in this case, that means giving the media companies the feeling that they'll be able to control their own content."

Media companies like NBC and News Corp. invest large amounts of capital to create their content. Google, meanwhile, only delivers content. As its technology has developed, Google's awesome distribution capability has allowed it to monetize the content created by others, taking precious advertising dollars away from the traditional media industry and even transforming the way advertisers pay to reach consumers.

In the end, protecting its content from the likes of Google is a legal issue for content creators, rather than a technological or strategic issue. While the rule of law may be slow to assert itself, Bernoff says that eventually it will prevail.

"Google's mission is to provide access to all the world's information," he says. "The problem with that is that much of that information belongs to other people, so unless they can find a way to do this with respect for the rights of other people, there's a real conflict to be resolved."

MediaNews reported in February that Google has a plan to use technology from a Los Gatos, Calif.-based firm called Audible Magic Corp. to filter videos and other content on YouTube for copyrighted materials, but that information has yet to be confirmed.

"This Viacom lawsuit would go away if Google made a commitment to actually do filtering, but somewhere in the company somebody seems to be saying 'I wonder how far we can get with this thing,'" says Bernoff. "As long as they maintain that position, the rest of the industry will line up against them."

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