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Wednesday June 20, 3:43 AMYouTube goes international in nine languages
Local language versions are now available in Britain, Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen told a press conference. A German version should become operational soon as well, and site offerings are to be extended to other countries. "YouTube will now be more accessible and interesting to a worldwide audience, and we look forward to rolling out in other countries in the months to come," Chad Hurley, YouTube's other co-founder, said in a statement. YouTube, acquired by the US search engine Google in October last year, said it had signed partnership agreements with such international content providers as the BBC, the French all news channel France 24 and the French public-service television company France Televisions, as well as the Spanish channels Antena 3 and Cuatro TV. Deals have also been reached with European football clubs Chelsea, AC Milan, Barcelona and Real Madrid. Additional contributors are non-profit organisations such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, UNHCR, and Medecins du Monde, the statement said. Sakina Arsiwala, in charge of YouTube's international operation, said users in the nine new countries would now have access to worldwide content with locally adapted technical support. The YouTube statement quoted Hurley as saying his group sought to offer its service "to a global community, by bringing them local sites that not only promote their communities but speak their language." Already, Internet users view some 100 million videos on YouTube daily, and six hours of new content are added every minute, according to figures released Tuesday. Google is building up its presence in Europe, where it is already well ahead of competitors Microsoft and Yahoo!. In France, YouTube, which currently functions in English, had 20.2 percent of the video-sharing market in April compared with 19.6 percent for a rival Internet site, Dailymotion. YouTube has incurred the wrath of some European sports bodies that have filed lawsuits against the service. The Premier League, which runs England's top football division, sued YouTube in May, charging it with "knowingly misappropriating and exploiting this valuable property" by encouraging footage to be viewed on its site. Francois Quideau, directeur of communication for the French football league LFP, said it had joined the action because of first division matches being shown on the site illegally. The French Tennis Federation FFT owns television rights for matches at the French Open and and has complained about the same problem. |
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