In February Microsoft overtook Google for total unique visitors in the 15 – 34 female age bracket.* Microsoft have been in second place to Google for the last few years so this is quite an achievement and probably in no small part due to Microsoft’s recent advertising campaign for Bing, their new search engine. Has anyone been swayed by Microsoft’s Bing? Personally I’ve not found Bing as user friendly or as fluid as Google who specialise in search engine activity.

The stats however extend to more than just the respective search engines, they include the whole network of properties owned by Microsoft and Google. Are Microsoft about to challenge Google for internet supremacy or have Google just had a blip at reaching 15 – 34 women (Google held their position as No.1 in other demographics)? Watch this space…

*Source: Comscore.

BBC iplayer have been blocked from sharing their iplayer technology free of charge with other UK commercial broadcasters by the BBC Trust. To me this seems to raise two problems. Firstly iplayer is by far and away the best technology and platform for VOD currently in the UK and has also been a massive success. For other broadcasters to compete with this will require a huge investment in time, technology and people at a time when traditional advertising revenue is declining wont this strengthen the BBC’s position making it the dominant UK player.

More worryingly with the imminent launch of Hulu in the UK and Youtube starting to carry long form content (C4 has just done a deal for its back catalogue of programmes and U2 are to stream one of their gigs live on YT) the level of competition for ITV, C4, Five and Sky in the VOD area will increase further.

I just can’t help but think that we’ll look back at some recent decisions like this and the rejection of the Project Kangaroo and regret that we didn’t provide British broadcasters a better chance of competing in what is going to be a huge revenue area in the future. Once Hulu arrives and Youtube gets more long form content onboard it may be the begining of the end for certainly a handful of channels and maybe even some broadcasters over the coming decade.