Is YouTube, really the next Google?

I read an article in the NY Times the other day, and it got me thinking about how we as consumer view and process information. Google has long been the number one search in, but YouTube recently knocked off Yahoo as the number two. With 2.8 Billion searches on YouTube, one has to ask what is being search. The NY Times article profiled a young boy, who uses YouTube first for any search – rather than a traditional search engine like Google.

The two searches reveal two completely different types of information. The example used in the NY Times article was about the Hillary Clinton ad: 3:00am. Google returns searches about the ad in context of news and related to the campaign. YouTube however, returns the actual commercial.

Since people are generally more visual creatures, it makes sense that a video site is nipping at the heels of a text heavy search engine – now that the technology has finally caught up with our views. However, it is still the children that use YouTube as our generation currently uses Google, which has a considerable implication on the future of media and news consumption once this ‘kids’ grow up and drive consumer purchasing. This has two main unanswered questions: How will this new way of media consumption change viewership and advertising? Stay Tuned.