Hugene - 5:02 pm on May 7, 2009 (gmt 0)

Definitely the pressure is building up on YouTube and the clock to serious monetization is ticking. This deal, even though Disney seems to get a lot out of it and give little back, is just a way to further strengthen Hulu and entrench the site as the online destination for professional content. And by judging on the media buzz it is creating, it seems to be working. YouTube had years of head start, but I believe media companies saw what happened with record labels and iTunes, and they are fighting to avoid it all cost. Basically they want to avoid dealing with a 3rd party for distribution online, they want to own the web channel themselves. But YouTube is not at all dead yet: the other day I had read that YouTube served more search queries than Yahoo, become 2nd search engine after G itself; and they also announced that deal where YouTube will be used as the platform for serving commercial content (can't even find it news, shows how little buzz it created). And there is always the user generated content, perfect for short internet-attention-span viewing.