Speculating here about Disney’s recent (quasi-) presence on YouTube, we concluded that:

• YouTube was expanding beyond its core business of UGC (user-generated content) hosting into premium licensed content - and is willing to be just an aggregator to do it.
• Disney was finally ‘dipping its toe into video stream syndication via YouTube before placing its bet on hulu.

Well, this just in (based on a recent newteevee.com article):

• YouTube:
  • It now appears a total redesign of the YouTube site is planned - to better brand the new YouTube premium (licensed) content as a separate service than the preexisitng YouTube UGC service.
  • YouTube will allow Disney to deliver its streams in their native format, à la the Silverlight live streams of the recent NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship deliverd by CBS.

• Disney:
  • We had predicted Disney would pull the tiny amount of content they had on YouTube once they finalized the agreement to buy a 30% equitry stake in hulu, but instead it appears Disney is in talks with YouTube to expand its YouTube offerings to include select ABC and ESPN clips as well. 
    

This more recent information on YouTube and Disney indicates that the trends we had previously identified are even stronger than we had originally thought:

• Not only will Youtube redesign and optimize the entire website for premium content, it appears they’re also willing to be agnostic as to both hosting location and streaming technology.
• As for Disney, ABC will soon become the only major network with content available on both YouTube and hulu.  As such, the company will quickly be going from the least syndicated major network to the most syndicated major network.

YouTube recognizes that their dominance in UGC will help drive eyeballs to these new premium offerings, and is clearly eager to start competing head to head with hulu.  If the YouTube/ABC/ESPN numbers turn out to be good, will hulu’s content partners (perhaps even co-owners Fox and NBC) consider syndicating their streams to YouTube as well?

Until the next generation of CE hardware comes along and changes the premium content internet video space completely, the ‘war for the web browser’ should be an interesting diversion…