Don’t believe what you read. That’s Google’s response to a New York Post article reporting that YouTube is about to launch a subscription streaming video movie rental service in Europe, as a trial for a similar service in the U.S.
The Post piece seemed very confident about the story, mentioning months of talks with Hollywood studios and a $100 million figure available for content deals, but a YouTube UK spokesperson told the PaidContent:UK site that it just wasn’t the case:
Today, YouTube is focused on building out and improving its current US-based rental offering. While we aim to always push all of our products out globally to our community, we have no plans to launch a European rentals service in the near future.
Interestingly enough, as PaidContent points out, YouTube already launched a small-scale movie rental service last year, but Netflix shouldn’t be losing any sleep over it; it focuses less on premium titles, and more on niche material. For now, at least…
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