This entry is a follow up to the previous one I wrote last week titled: What’s Worth More: Online Eyeballs or Digital Media Content written right about the time the drums of war between Google and Viacom were being heard ’round the world. As the whole world knows by now, Google finally got sued over its subsidiary’s (YouTube) claimed copyright infringement of Viacom’s content. Many experts in the field had anticipated that YouTube would eventually get sued (including Google…the company set aside a couple of hundred million dollars as part of the YouTube acquisition to fight copyright infringement litigation) for allowing its users to upload video content on the site, with little to no screening of the content to make sure such content truly belongs to the user uploading “the stuff”.

What’s a kicker to me is that both Google and Viacom were rumored to be in serious negotiations to put Viacom’s content on the YouTube site, in exchange for some type of revenue guarantee by Google, just before it fell apart last week. Google is known in the search industry for paying top dollar to partners to become their exclusive provider of Web Search solutions (that includes web search and sponsored listings), see Google press release Time Warner’s AOL and Google to Expand Strategic Alliance. It’s not hard to imagine that Viacom tried to arm wrestle Google and get them to agree to some outrageous revenue guarantees in exchange for Viacom’s content.

If that’s how the negotiations between these two companies happened, well I don’t think Google was ready to open its wallet and sign that big fat check as they’ve done in the past. In the absence of a negotiated agreement, often times companies resort to suing other companies claiming all sorts of outrageous violations to see if one sticks in front of a judge. In the case of Viacom, I find it hard to believe a judge is going to buy their claim. Viacom’s lawyers and executive team rolled the diced to go for the big pay check. In the end, when all this mess is settled, I think they’re going to wish they had taken Google’s offer, whatever that was.