The market seems to like the deal. Google is being very upfront about doing the deal to accelerate their efforts in the video advertising space. Google has been getting dinged lately for not finding other explosive ad revenue lines beyond the Cost Per Click text link on a search result page. Much like that model is the killer app for direct marketers, the pre roll video commercial is the killer app for brand marketers. Now Google has a the brand that attracts 70,000+ new pieces of content a day (why they just highered a very sharp CMO who knows how to build robust community brands). Presumably they will find a way to parse and segment that content so they can syndicate it out to relevant sites — complete with a high CPM pre-roll ad.
The press has been focusing on the copyright elephant in the room. Mark Cuban keeps blogging about it: http://www.blogmaverick.com/2006/10/09/i-still-think-google-is-crazy/
Details about the deals with CBS, Universal et al are a little fuzzy at the moment. I'll do some digging and blog about them later.
