In its fifth acquisition of 2010, Google has acquired a fledgling video service that could offer some backup to its YouTube property. The Internet giant snapped up Episodic for an undisclosed amount.
Google hasn’t officially announced the deal, but the San Francisco-based startup was so “thrilled” to join the Google family that its cofounders shared the news in a blog post on Friday. The post hints at Google’s motives for buying what Episodic describes as its “comprehensive platform for broadcasting live and on-demand video to the web or any web-enabled device.”
“The Episodic team will join Google and continue its work to bring a great video experience to the web, mobile phones, and IPTV devices,” wrote Noam Lovinsky and Matias Cudich. The cofounders promised no service interruptions for customers.
Monetizing YouTube
A direct competitor with Brightcove, content creators, marketers and enterprise customers use Episodic to deliver video to the web and mobile devices. Episodic lets publishers and marketers host, stream, measure and monetize video content.
Monetization may be the keyword for Google in this deal. With Apple’s iPad exploding onto the scene, many analysts believe online video consumption will continue its fast-paced growth in 2010.
“Video is a critical growth area online, in mobile and now on tablets,” said Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. “This purchase offers more tools and monetization possibilities to Google for IP-based video across all screens. It also gives YouTube some new potential monetization scenarios to contemplate.”
The online video market swelled to nearly 178 million U.S. Internet users watching 33.2 billion videos in December alone, according to comScore. That translates to 86.5 percent of total U.S. Internet users watching online videos that month. Users watch an average of 187 videos, or about six videos a day. The average length of those videos is 4.1 minutes.
YouTube is the leading…