Amazon, Apple, Facebook, or Google?

As news this weeks emerges that an Apple TV set is all but a done deal, it seems that internet powered video is coalescing behind four Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google.

Let’s look at each of them.

Apple: Has a great closed environment and solid content deals with most providers for their iTunes store. Will that carry over with the release of their TV set? Will this foray sound off alarm bells at cable companies if Apple starts gobbling up content deals for a TV set with broadcasters like Disney, Fox, Scripps, etc.? They should be going off now, in my opinion. Food Network? There’ll be an app for that.

Amazon: How well the Kindle Fire tablet sells and performs will be telling of how well Amazon can penetrate the streaming video market and compete with both Apple and Netflix. They have the deep pockets to sustain competitive pricing on the Fire and with an ever-growing library of streaming content available pretty much anywhere, I think Amazon is poised to really heat this space up after years of dominance by Apple.

Facebook: I know it seems odd to add Facebook here, but they are very relevant to this conversation. Video is a social medium. People like to watch videos that their friend like and share. That recommendation is inherently more valuable than a search engine result which has zero taste. As online video consumption grows, Facebook is poised to play an integral role and may even become more relevant as time goes on. Their pay per view experiment seems to have been lackluster (based on the fact no one has really talked about it for a long time), but after opening up and allowng video embeds into the site, Facebook cemented itself as part of the discovery and consumption eco-system of online video.

Google: With the launch of Google TV 2.0, it looks like Google has improved the product substantially. However, with Logitech getting burnt to a crisp over the first Google TV launch, I feel that it will be difficult to find a hardware company that will as gladly work under Google’s fairly stringent standards (you MUST have a QWERTY keyboard, for example.) Where Google really intends to disrupt the industry is with YouTube, who just announced a slate of professionally made programs for the site. Think of it as an online cable provider with content spanning any desired genre and most demographics. If they can continue to get the engagement out of their current audience with these new shows (many of which will be longer format) then, again, alarm bells should be going off at cable companies.

I’ve left out myriad players that have some part of the market, like Sony, Microsoft, Netflix, Roku and more, but these four players seem to have emerged as the leaders in new media/internet video.

Will we look up in five years and have one of these four be dominant, will they all be on relatively equal ground (but with different pockets of consumers) or will someone else rise up that no one suspected?

That I can’t answer, but I sure am interested to find out!

Postscript: Interestingly enough, I wrote this on Wednesday this week and Thursday NPR released this story.

Also, here’s another interesting and relevant article on the subject.