Mumbai: Broadcasting giants News Corp and NBC Universal will partner YouTube rivals AOL, MSN and Yahoo! to distribute video content for a new online joint venture in a bid to give some serious competition to Google's YouTube.

The media giants said they would launch a free online service, featuring full length movies and clips from at least a dozen television networks this summer.
YouTube has clips less than five minutes in length.

The plan is to pool videos from NBC Universal and News Corp and then distribute them for viewing on AOL, MSN and Yahoo.

Analysts expect the new partnership's plan to introduce full length feature films that could be viewed for free to bring about a major change in the nascent video market.

Google's response to the new challenge posed to it is still awaited.

News Corp chief operating officer Peter Chernin and Jeff Zucker, NBC Univeral's CEO, said they had spoken with Google CEO Eric Schmidt about joining the new offering.

"This is obviously not a YouTube killer," Chernin said. "We've said for a long time we believe in the power and benefit of ubiquitous distribution. We are in fact willing to talk to anybody provided they are willing to meet our economic terms and our copyright protection terms."

But, while the official release calls this a new "site" coming later this year, more reading makes it a video distribution network that will be anything but a rival to YouTube. In fact, it could even distribute video to YouTube, if the new company decides there's money to be made there. Below, a rundown on how it seems likely to work and the existing partners that will carry the content.