Google / Disney Deal Expands, Now Includes Movies

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It was only just a couple weeks ago that we brought you word that Disney was looking to get involved with YouTube, offering up a variety of shows and other short-form Disney stuff for the streaming video haven. But now, it seems that Disney’s looking to put a little more meat on that bone with the addition of several movies to arrive on the channel over the next few months.

They’re going to start small, but not insultingly so, offering up only a few titles at first but with some fairly big names, including Cars (and its unfairly ignored sequel Cars 2), Alice in Wonderland (no word on whether it’s the original cartoon or the Johnny Depp version), and Winnie The Pooh (of which there have been many, many such titles). Not exactly a big roster, but the word is that, over the next several weeks, we’ll see those numbers climb on the order of hundreds-fold, giving us access to most of the Disney lineup.

Given that, formerly, Disney was going through Netflix for a lot of its streaming fare, it’s another bad sign for Netflix, who has had more than a few of them of late, what with their price hikes and outages and bizarre plans and all. And the rest of the streaming video marketplace, which is no small market these days, has been doing most everything it can to capitalize on Netflix’s missteps. This newest blow has to be a tough one for Netflix, who is already suffering from not only possible losses of current content, but also difficulty in finding replacement content.

And Google hasn’t exactly gone all out in promoting YouTube’s movie selection, either, but there’s quite a bit to be had there, even leaving aside the massive ranks of user-generated content available. YouTube could well be a serious match for Netflix and the other services out there, and it’s safe to say that, on some levels, it already is.

But what do you guys think here? Does the addition of Disney movies give YouTube a little extra punch and make you think about it as a source for your entertainment if you’re not already using it as such? Or can you not take YouTube seriously under any circumstances? No matter what you think, the comments section is waiting for you to tell us about it below!