As if Google-owned YouTube wasn’t making enough money in ad revenue, they’ve decided to start peddling music and games for a little monetary boost. For now, it’s an experimental project and they’ll be attempting to sell music, videos, TV shows… wait, iTunes, anyone? Actually, it seems YouTube will be partner with iTunes and Amazon so that YouTube users will be able to clink on links that will take them directly to the iTunes or Amazon store where they can purchase all those goodies including video games and e-books. Google acquired YouTube back in October of ’06 and ever since, investors have been haggling Google about making some real money off the broadcast-yourself-site. So far, the majority of revenue comes from advertising and we all know how annoying that can get – especially since they’ve been throwing up those pop up ads that come on during videos. Pre-roll ads, the ads that play for 10 to 30 seconds before a video starts, have also been considered but they’re holding back as a last resort (those are the most painfully annoying thus far). We’ll see where this goes and if it takes off and hope it removes some of the more annoying ads from YouTube.
