Google exec Steve Grove says Google+ could become the YouTube of live video
Steve Grove: Google+ could do for live video, what YouTube did for recorded video — With over three years in the Google+ team, and heading its community partner scheme, Steve Grove's role is to make sure …
Context & Ripple Effects
Grove's pitch is the culmination of a long build-out: Google has been wiring live and recorded video into Google+ since the 2010 writeup of its massive-scale video conferencing plans, through January 2012's video status updates, to the May 2013 redesign that made Hangouts one of three pillars alongside Streams and Photos. His community-partner role means he is the executive tasked with recruiting broadcasters into that machinery.
The claim matters less as product news than as positioning — no launch was announced — yet the story travelled unusually wide for an executive quote, picked up by Ars Technica (twice), Quartz, BGR, SocialTimes, TechnoBuffalo, 9to5Google and Softpedia. That breadth reflects how much weight observers put on whether Google+ can find a job besides being a Facebook rival.
First-order effects
- Google's partner-recruitment effort shifts from courting social users to courting broadcasters and brands who might run live shows through Hangouts, making Google+ a production platform rather than just a feed.
- YouTube's recorded-video audience becomes the implicit distribution asset: any live push on Google+ would point real-time streams at the largest video catalog on the web.
Second-order effects
- If Google+ succeeds in live video, it creates channel conflict inside Google itself — Google+ would be competing for creator time and ad budgets against the very YouTube franchise Grove invokes as the model.
- Rivals in social video face pressure to answer with live equivalents of their own, since Grove's framing implies the recorded-to-live migration is the next land grab on the social graph.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, live video stops being a standalone service category and becomes a feature of social platforms — consolidation of broadcast infrastructure under companies that already own the audience and the archive.
- Wearable and always-on capture (the same coverage window includes the first full year of Google Glass) increases the volume of raw live footage looking for a home, strengthening whichever platform owns both the pipe and the playback.
The trend: Social platforms are extending their video franchises from recorded to live content, betting that existing audiences and social graphs can seed real-time broadcasting faster than dedicated services can build community.