Google served up a record number of video clips in May to U.S. Internet users, mostly through YouTube, as for the first time each Google visitor watched an average of more than 100 clips during the month, according to comScore.
Almost 183 million U.S. residents watched online video during the month, with a whopping 14.6 billion video clips viewed at Google sites, primarily YouTube. That’s a record for Google, which also nabbed 43.1 percent of all online video clips served up during the month, comScore said on Thursday.
Hulu came in a distant second place, with 1.2 billion video clips, or 3.5 percent of the total, followed by Microsoft with a little over 642,000 (1.9 percent) and Vevo with 430,257 (1.3 percent). Viacom, Yahoo, CBS Interactive, Turner and Fox Interactive, which includes MySpace, arrived in a virtual tie for fifth place with 1 percent. Facebook followed with a little over 245,100 clips (0.7 percent).
With almost 145 million, Google sites–primarily YouTube–also ranked first in terms of unique viewers, each of whom watched an average of 101.2 video clips in May. Yahoo placed second in this category with 46 million unique viewers (7.3 clips per viewer), while Vevo, with 45.6 million viewers, Facebook, with 45.5 million viewers, and Fox Interactive, with 44.3 million viewers, rounded out the top five.
News of YouTube’s stellar performance in May follows a big legal victory yesterday, when Viacom’s US$1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube, filed more than three years ago, was dismissed.
Judge Louis L. Stanton, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, granted Google’s motion for summary judgment, saying that YouTube complied with the requirements of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to remove user-uploaded video clips when copyright owners asked they be taken down.
Viacom, however, said it plans to appeal and pursue its allegations that YouTube, acquired by Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion, is liable for what Viacom calls widespread and willful infringement of its movies, TV shows and other content.