Yahoo! Launches YouTube Competitor

prostoalex writes "Yahoo! launched Yahoo! Video last night, allowing users to upload, share and tag their videos. For Windows users the player uses the standard Yahoo! Player, while Mac and Linux users get video encoded in Flash. Yahoo! joins a highly competitive field of video services currently led by MSN Video, YouTube and Google Video. The Associated Press reports on the Yahoo! Video launch as well."

Can they give it a rest?

[ID000001]

Seriously. Yahoo isn't doing this to earn money. They know video online is already crowded to the lid, they are only doing this to over crowd the market so nobody will have a strong hold of the market.

Good business sense, but does nothing for customers, we already have more then enough choices, more only pollute this field in my opinion

YouTube will lead...for now.

[ImaNihilist]

YouTube will continue it's dominance until one of two things happen: a) YouTube actually starts moderating and deleting it's illegal content or b) YouTube starts making money. If they get rid of all their illegal content, half of their userbase is pretty much gone, including me. It's pretty nice to be able to watch episodes of South Park and Aqua Teen Hunger Force, among hundreds of other shows. If they start making money, then production studios and the MPAA are going to want a piece of it and start spitting out law suits and cease and desist orders until the site is FORCED to delete half it's content, run 120% more ads to cover legal fees, and it's subscriber base falls to nothing.

Re:Can they give it a rest?

[geoffspear]

Insightful? What are the moderators smoking today?

If Yahoo! is doing this for a reason other than to make money, it's not good business sense.

On the other hand, creating more competition, whether it's profitable or not, is good for consumers. Allowing another player to get a "strong hold" of the market is certainly not good for consumers.

I don't believe I've seen a less insightful comment on Slashdot in a month, and I suspect the poster is a shill for one of Yahoo!'s competitors. Either that or a head injury patient.

No more CODECS please.

[Whammy666]

It seems everytime you turn around to view someone's video, there's a requirement for yet another proprietary codec. If Yahoo would allow the videos to be uploaded/downloaded in a standard format (like mpeg4 or quicktime) rather than yet another oddball format (yahoo video? WTF?), then they might have something.

No more oddball codecs for me. No WMP either. M$ can keep their DRM and stick it. And I have banned Flash from my system as well.

Re:Can they give it a rest?

[ID000001]

I do partly agree with you. Actually.

It is not good business sense that they will find it hard to earn money, but it is good business sense that they will holds onto their customers with more service.

It is not always good for consumer that there are more competition, but personally, I believe video is one of the thing that need a major player to fight the traditional broadcast company. More compeition in this field on the internet is only going to make the switch from TV broadcast to internet TV much more difficult in the long run.

I do not agree with me being head injury patient. However, I don't plan on insulting one neither. =P

Re:Just out of curiosity

[szembek]

I think EA's Pogo.com does better than Yahoo!