Google confirms it has acquired Episodic, which makes a platform for broadcasting live and on-demand video over the Web. Website publishers, marketers and businesses use Episodic's platform to stream, analyze and serve video content to their audiences through computers, mobile devices and IPTV devices. YouTube and Episodic overlap in some areas, as both serve video for publishers and marketers on various Web-connected devices. Google is quite serious about expanding its Web video purview, which makes good business sense.
Google April 2 confirmed it has acquired
Episodic, which makes a platform for broadcasting live and
on-demand video over the Web.
Website publishers, marketers and businesses use Episodic's platform to
stream, analyze and serve video content to their audiences through computers,
mobile devices and IPTV devices.
The startup also offers content management and sells an ad server to let
customers insert ads in videos and
bill
via credit cards. Currently, Episodic will
work on the Apple
iPhone. Android, BlackBerry and Symbian device support is reportedly on the
way.
Co-founders Noam Lovinsky and Matias Cudich, who announced the news on
the
Episodic company blog, said new account sign-up has been suspended.
Existing Episodic customers will continue to use the service they pay for,
though a representative from Episodic will contact customers to discuss
transition planning and the available options.
A Google spokesperson confirmed the deal in an e-mail to eWEEK:
"We were impressed by the
Episodic team, the vision they have for Internet video, and the progress they
have made in bringing a great video experience to the Web. Online video should
be engaging, entertaining, informative, and effective. Both Episodic and Google
place value on creating a great experience for viewers and on delivering a
powerful and flexible platform for publishers, marketers, and
advertisers."
Both acquirer and target were vague on specifics. Episodic said its team
will "continue its work to bring a great video experience to the Web,
mobile phones and IPTV devices."
TechCrunch
reported that Episodic's technology will be folded into YouTube, with its
staff joining the week of April 5.
YouTube and Episodic overlap in some areas, as both help publishers and
marketers serve video to their audiences from Web-connected devices. Both use
analytics
to give publishers an idea of how much or how little their content is being
consumed on the platforms. And both certainly are learning how to make money
from pairing video content with advertising.
This acquisition shows that Google is quite serious about expanding its Web
video purview, which makes good business sense. Consumers are uploading 24
hours of video per minute on YouTube, which just received a
user interface cleaning.
Google recently
purchased On2 Technologies, a video compression codec maker, to
shrink packets of video data.
Episodic is a viable rival to the larger
Brightcove, which was rumored to be in acquisition talks with
Google in 2009. Brightcove, which could have cost Google $500 million,
just
unveiled a framework for HTML5, which Google is banking heavily
on for the Web.
Google has been on an acquisition tear of late, acquiring Web photo editor
Picnik, collaboration software makers
DocVerse and
AppJet, social search engine
Aardvark and mobile e-mail player
ReMail.
Google also bought display ad provider
Teracent and is trying to land AdMob, a deal that is under
FTC scrutiny.
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