ReadWriteWeb

For the last three years, Brightcove has been implementing a steady transition from a YouTube alternative, to a premium video services provider, to a Web functionality provider. The last critical step in that transition may have taken place yesterday, as the company once considered a Google takeover target makes its move in the fast-growing HTML5 apps platforms market.

Unlike appMobi, whose mobiUs ecosystem uses a utility model for billing customers on a granular scale, Brightcove's new App Cloud will be a premium Web apps host. It will provide APIs that aim to fill in HTML5's many device-specific gaps, including for accessing tablets' built-in cameras, accelerometers, and location finders. And it will charge developers fees starting at $15,000 per year once their apps go live.

Although enterprise video adoption is slow, several platforms are competing to bring the simple video sharing experience of services like YouTube to business users. Here's a look at five of them.

Each of these solutions give uses the ability to upload video, encode it, view and share it online and track analytics.

Web-video management startup Brightcove announced Monday that it had secured an additional $12 million in venture funding and hopes to make its first public offering as soon as next year. As we reported Monday, the first quarter of 2010 saw a significant rise in IPO and M&A activity for venture-backed companies, and Brightcove seems to preparing itself for one of these options in the next year.

Video platform provider Brightcove just announced the launch of a new tool for website publishers called the "Brightcove Experience Framework for HTML5." The framework allows the company's 1,300 customers create HTML5-compatible websites for delivering video content to Apple mobile devices, including the upcoming slate computer known as the iPad, as well as the iPhone and iPod Touch.

There has been a lot of debate about the move to HTML5 for Web video support, an area previously dominated by Adobe Flash and its accompanying Web browser plugin. Some publishers claim making the switch is a burden while others, most notably Apple CEO Steve Jobs, say the move is "trivial." The truth, says Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire, is that "it depends." For some publishers using homegrown video solutions, building a new HTML5 website is indeed hard work, but for customers using platform solutions (like his, of course), the transition is much easier.

According to a tweet by Mark Glaser from PBS's MediaShift, Google is in talks with the white-label Internet video provider Brightcove and wants to acquire the company for up to $700 million. Brightcove's customers include a large variety of large enterprises such as the New York Times, Showtime, Universal Music, AMC, AOL, and the Weather Channel. If this rumors turns out to be true, this acquisition would easily turn Google into the dominant commercial Web video provider.

This Labor Day Boxee users will celebrate an increase in their mainstream web video content. Boxee just announced a partnership with video platform company Brightcove. The deal will potentially usher major players like CBS, Sony Music and Discovery onto Boxee's web television entertainment platform. The first publishers to take advantage of the new arrangement include Condé Nast Digital (publishers of Wired and Epicurious) and children's programming site Qubo.

Not too long ago, Joost was the poster child for the online video revolution. It featured a slick desktop player with innovative controls, good video quality, and it was developed by the team behind Skype and Kazza. It seemed like nothing could go wrong here, but somehow, Joost never managed to get any traction and after the first hype had died down, most users just abandoned the desktop player for in-browser video portals like YouTube and Hulu. After a long delay, Joost finally abandoned its desktop player strategy, but the company never managed to attract a large enough user base.

Today, Joost announced that it is mostly abandoning its original strategy and that the company will focus on offering white label video solutions for media companies and distributors instead.

Brightcove was once considered to be a formidable challenger for YouTube. However, just about a year ago, it became clear that the company had given up on this dream when it announced that it would no longer accept direct consumer uploads to its service. Since then, Brightcove only featured content from its roughly 40,000 publishing partners on the Brightcove Network, though its main business has been its white-label video platform. Today, Brightcove announced that it will also close the free Brightcove Network and completely focus on its premium services.