Google Pay-Per-View?

Here's Shankar Gupta's piece at MediaPost (reg. req'd) about Google gearing up to potentially charge users to watch full-length videos.

While more and more users are paying for content online, this move would (in my view) be premature. There's too much competition out there and the broadband video market is too new (although it's apparently working on the iPod) to institute a pay-per-view strategy.

Speaking of such competition, Starz's Vongo (a $9.95 subscription service as opposed to PPV) will soon permit movie downloads onto a variety of devices. Eventual consumer adoption of such services will largely put video rental companies out of business (and maybe Netflix too, unless they go forward with a similar service, previously "indefinitely postponed").

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This USAToday column looks at the long tail of video content and the role of user recommendations in driving that content (rehash, but timely rehash).

Here's Om Malik's theory about Larry Page's keynote at CES and Google Video