This June, Brightcove's CEO Jeremy Allaire told Sillicon Alley Insider that the company was now profitable and that he expected the company to see a 50% revenue growth in 2009.

Is Google Buying Brightcove's Tech or Its Customers?

While Google could obviously offer the same kind of services Brightcove currently offers on its own YouTube platform, Brightcove has already locked in most of the customers that Google would also be competing for. Also, while YouTube was designed as a consumer platform (even as Google is slowly moving to featuring more commercial content on the site), Brightcove has set up a platform that gives enterprise customers the flexibility and metrics they need. In the end, though, if this rumor is true, Google is most likely more interested in Brightcove's customer base than in its technology.

We asked both Google and Brightcove for a comment about this rumor and will update the post when/if we hear from them.

Update: as Dan Rayburn points out in the comments below and on his blog, Brightcove's setup requires its customers to use third-party content-delivery networks like Limelight to stream their videos. If Google really acquires Brightcove, this could turn out to be a problem, as it would keep Google from being able to use YouTube's (cheap) infrastructure.

With today's Brightcove partnership, Boxee can point major networks towards a solution that allows them to increase control over their web video content and advertising. Brightcove offers customers the option to automatically serve video ads or they can choose to utilize a turnkey solution for customized ad placement. Meanwhile Boxee offers content owners a chance to move web video to television audiences. If Brightcove clients like Fox, Showtime Networks and A&E Entertainment welcome Boxee integration, other providers can't help but take notice. This is important given Boxee's battle for Hulu integration.

While Boxee users have always loved the Hulu app, Hulu's content partners requested removal from the Boxee community in early February. Boxee was forced to respond with a workaround solution. The new deal further legitimizes Boxee as a distributor of mainstream content. For a complete list of Brightcove customers and potential Boxee content providers, visit the Brightcove customers page.

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.

As Mike Volpi points out on the Joost blog, the company will also downsize its staff in New York and London, and shut down its development center in the Netherlands. Joost will continue to host content on Joost.com, however, and keep the portal running for the time being. The focus of Joost, however, will be on the white label platform, which the company describes as a "cost-effective, end-to-end solution for media companies to publish video under their own brands."

Volpi also announced that he is stepping down as Joost's CEO. Matt Zelesko, Joost's current SVP of engineering, will replace Volpi as CEO.

Lots of Competition

Joost is entering a pretty crowded market, with Brightcove, Viddler, EdgeCast and many others vying for customers. There can be no doubt that Joost will be able to deliver the technology, but we will have to wait and see if Joost can make this transition and attract enough customers for its white label solution.

According to a blog post by Adam Berrey, Brightcove's Senior VP of Marketing and Strategy, the advertising financed Brightcove Network only drove about 1% of Brightcove's revenue, so from a purely financial perspective, it must have been an easy decision for Brightcove to shutter the free version of its service.

Given the current economic climate and the cost of running a video service, shutting down the Network and the Brightcove.TV site that showcased those videos probably made good economic sense for the company. While Brightcove has been very successful in attracting big partners for its white-label service, including the New York Times, Showtime, and National Geographic, it was never able to compete with YouTube.

Videos Will Stop Playing

Brightcove will delete every account that has not been upgraded to Brightcove's new, low-cost Brightcove Basic plan by December 17, 2008, and all the videos published by users who do not upgrade their plans will stop playing at that point as well. Also, if you embedded a Brightcove video on your blog or social network page and the publisher doesn't upgrade to the paid account, those videos will stop playing as well.

This seems like a rather drastic measure, so it will be interesting to see how the publishers on the Brightcove Network will react to this.