Youtube has finally launched in Germany today. youtube.de redirects to de.youtube.com, but the site is fully localised, they run a special competition to welcome and hook up new German users, the Featured Videos are mostly in German and legal disclaimers seem to have been adapted to local laws.
Süddeutsche Zeitung reports that Google has finally come to an agreement with GEMA – Germany’s watchdog for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights – which has been the biggest obstacle for a launch in Germany. Versions in the UK, Brasil, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain have launched about five months ago.
One of their first official partners is public television channel ZDF. What’s symptomatic for the thinking of German TV networks is the way ZDF has launched its channel. The first video you are going to see is a pretty boring ad for their own video portal www.mediathek.zdf.de. Compare this to the euphoric welcome video of Oprah whose channel launched a few days ago.
Google has been negotiating with many German publishers and their channels should pop up soon.
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November 8th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
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November 12th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Hm, as far as I remember, Gema is only part of the problem and unless they have reached an agreement with all of the relevant licencing bodies, this is new trouble waiting. But nonetheless a very interesting step in the future.
November 14th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
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