Brett_Tabke - 4:50 am on Apr 3, 2010 (gmt 0)

[techcrunch.com...]

Google has acquired Episodic an online video hosting platform, according to a blog post on the startup’s site. Google has confirmed the acquisition. We are told that Episodic’s technology will be folded into YouTube, and its staff will be joining YouTube’s office in San Bruno, Calif. next week. Details on the acquisition price were not disclosed. Episodic’s publishing suite lets users manage and measure video content, and use the platform’s monetization services which enable ad insertion and credit card transactions for both live and on-demand video streaming. The suite itself is made up of five functional areas, including the ability to create video libraries, customer metadata fields, and the ability to encode. The player itself works on both the web and mobile browsers. Currently, Episodic is formatted for the iPhone only but Android, Blackberry and Symbian device support are coming soon. Interestingly, Episodic also offers an ad server that is interoperable with all major ad serving platforms, letting users insert ads into videos via a fairly simple process.