Comcast to Start Its Own YouTube Competitor

This cable company has been in the news a lot lately – from its shakedown of Netflix, to its attempt at monopolizing the market by wanting to absorb Time Warner Cable.  Now Comcast is making its intentions clear of wanting to start its very own YouTube competitor.

The senior vice president of video Matt Strauss confirmed that Comcast will unveil its new video channel to a (ahem) lucky few customers as a test trial.  This service will only operate on Comcast’s X1 set top boxes, and like YouTube, content creators will be uploading their videos which will then be available for people to watch.

Operating under the assumption that Comcast will be wanting this to succeed, it will be going after big name contributors on YouTube, as many as it can, as quickly as it can to contribute exclusively for Comcast.  It will need to attract users in droves to gain that critical mass needed to be viable in the market, which will be no easy task as YouTube is firmly established as the place to watch videos online.

You knew it was coming, yet ANOTHER reason net neutrality must happen.  If Comcast is starting its own YouTube like service, what is to stop it from putting the kibosh on YouTube content coming to your computer via its  internet?  Let’s say it makes YouTube videos come crashing down to a crawl, whilst its shiny new service blazes through with amazing speed?  Comcast did it to Netflix; there is no reason what so ever to think it won’t do the same with YouTube.