Ric Vatner publisher of eSTV an online TV style magazine

I think in respect of the long term future for eSTV, the biggest news this week revolves around one topic, Video and more specifically, Pay per View.

Pay per View Video coming to eSTV

eSTV have now secured new technology that was developed here in Australia and it will have a huge impact on us going forward.

We can now offer producers and video content owners the opportunity to put their films, for example:

• Short films,
• Movies,
• Documentaries,
• Training programmes (e.g. language lessons) or
• How To videos etc

on eSTV our TV style online magazine  on a pay per view basis. Putting them on eSTV will of course open them up to a larger audience

The owner of the content (i.e. of the video) will get paid every time someone watches the video because every video has a set fee to watch it. Another great feature is every video can have a different fee. So one film might cost $1.99 to watch and another $2.50 – each film can have its own price tag.

Of course the videos will be available to viewers world wide so the potential audience is huge.

Monetize your Videos

Imagine how many good to excellent movies there are out there that have never been able to tie up a distribution deal and have either earned their owners very little or nothing. Well that is about to change.

eSTV has already added a shopping mall to our magazine (which will open soon) and we recently “built” an office tower over that to cater for service businesses (see our Best Deals Australia information video) – well I can now see us adding a movie theatre so our visitors can watch movies as well.

This technology will enable video content owners to monetise their production be it a movie, a documentary or information video and it will also make it worthwhile for producers to create new content.

Web Sites can now sell Pay per View Video

Even better, we can also enable any web site (world wide) to add our video player to their web pages and serve the same pay per view content from their web site – and get paid every time someone watches the video. They can also add their own original pay per view content and get paid when people watch that.

Finally, web sites that add their own original content to the video player can also make their content available through our system to other web sites who will earn money every time it is viewed on their web site and so will the content owner.

Imagine you can now create training videos and make them available to your team world wide. Why would you go to the expense of producing DVDs and posting them when you can now use our video player and sell the video as pay per view.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any enquiries ric at eSTV dot com dot au.

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After eyeing each other off for the last two years and fighting little skirmishes like the one to become Facebook’s best friend (won by Microsoft) Google has finally weighed up its opponent and decided it is ready to declare war.

Well what Google actually declared is that it will declare war, next year. We have officially entered the pre fight period like before a fight in the playground when two bullies push and shove each other and beat their chest spruking what they are going to do to the other party.

Google has been nibbling away at Microsoft’s profit centers for the last two years by launching free programmes that do much the same as Microsoft’s paid product such as Google docs that potentially could eat away at Microsoft’s lucrative Office products range.

Microsoft has retaliated by beefing up its search engine offering and frustrating Google’s overtures to potential partners like Facebook.

But neither company has been successful in its move into the other company’s prime markets nor they would do well to remember Bertrand Russell’s adage “War does not determine who is right – only who is left.”

Google upped the stakes by announcing on Tuesday (7th July) it will launch its own operating system in the second half of next year, finally launching a direct assault on Microsoft’s crown jewel.

The Google operating system will initially be targeted to netbooks, then broadened to all PCs.  It will be a combination of a Google Chrome browser and a Linux kernel.  It is a separate project to Android (a complete set of software for mobile devices including an operating system, middleware and key mobile applications). It will be designed to be simple and fast.  It will also, presumably, be free.

So why is Google telegraphing its strategy so far in advance?

A year is a long time in computer land but this announcement bears all the hallmarks of a similar successful strategy employed by IBM in the halcyon days when it was caught napping by the take off of personal computers in the mid 80’s. IBM became notorious for announcing new models that were often still on the drawing board but the threat that a cheap IBM PC was on the way deterred many buyers from purchasing a computer until the IBM model was released and thereby deprived many up and coming PC manufacturers of the oxygen they needed to survive (and threaten IBM) – sales.

Secondly, developing a new operating system is complex and this announcement shows how much Google needs help from partners in this endeavor to be successful. It is in effect a clarion call to companies that feel threatened by Microsoft to ally themselves to Google.

An operating system that is distributed only by downloads won’t work, it needs to come loaded on the computer when it is purchased.  This has been the big problem with Chrome so far, and Google knows it needs to address it.

Assuming Google provide their full operating system free to both users and OEM PC makers as they have done with almost all of their non-search products to date, Microsoft will need to revise its plans for the free version of its own Windows 7 OS for netbooks. Up until now Microsoft has planned to provide a free lite version of 7(read free of bells and whistles) and try to get users to upgrade.

If Google’s free full version gains traction Microsoft may be excused a little panic time (you can imagine the salesman, “would Sir like to have the full version of this OS for free with life time free updates or pay for this buggy one).

This is a classic IBM disruption strategy. First, Google puts the market on notice that there is an alternative to upgrading to Microsoft 7 a full year before it will be ready but if you are a small business or even a large company potentially up for hundreds of thousands of dollars in upgrade costs in the middle of a financial crisis, wouldn’t you welcome an excuse to put the buying decision off for 12 months? Starving you know who of early sales and first mover advantage.

Second, Google’s strategy is to gain market share at the low end where traditionally the market leader won’t fight too hard to retain it because it’s low-margin.  But then… as the product gets better and more fully featured they begin to migrate up the ladder to the desk top.  Soon the market leader is retreating to defend the high-margin high-end but eventually, the upstart (free) product becomes mass market and the incumbent looks like a punch card operator that nobody needs anymore.

We have all seen industrial giants of the 20^th century crumble like cheese cake but I doubt anyone expected to see the digital giants of the computer age rise and fall so quickly but ask IBM or AOL if it can happen (although IBM has successfully reinvented itself and AOL is in the process of doing the same).

However as slick as the plan may be Google has not impressed us with its successes outside its core business of search and search advertising. You Tube is reputed to be losing over $400 million a year and other purchases by Google have been closed down or converted to open source (e.g. Jaiku). Success is not guaranteed but Microsoft needs to start working out how to defend its crown jewels against this assault.  It won’t be easy.

But like all wars there will be collateral damage and companies such as Apple could become non combatant casualties. Apple sells integrated hardware and software devices and if free software begins to take over the world their computer and phone products will look even more expensive when compared to their competitors. Sooner or later this will cause its market share or its profit margins to come down and its share price with it.

To read Google’s full press release go to our press release section here

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