gibbergibber - 10:17 am on Aug 11, 2007 (gmt 0)

--On the other hand, they set it up partly as way around the restrictive practices of the industry, which are changing. EMI has sold 'open' MP3 files since April, and now Universal are too. So it's no longer a 'special' site, and not exactly a 'core product' for Google.--

I hear what you're saying, and it does look like the industry is very slowly coming round to DRM-free sales, but the Universal and EMI non-DRM sales are still experimental though, and they're music rather than video.

I personally wonder if we'll see these video sales start to appear on YouTube instead of Google Video. YouTube is a much stronger brand than Google Video, people associate YouTube with videos whereas Google's image is still mainly one of text-based searches.

Or... it could just be that people aren't generally willing to buy video files for viewing on their computer. Just because something is popular, that doesn't mean people will pay for it: very few people would pay to watch the latest episode of a soap opera, but the advertising-supported free version may well have millions of regular viewers.