5. Sumner Redstone and the YouTube Guys
Frenemies since: Just about the moment Steve Chen and Chad Hurley (photo at right) launched YouTube in 2005, creating a haven for (among umpteen other things) clips from shows such as The Daily Show which are owned by Viacom. Viacom in turn is controlled by National Amusements, which is run by the octogenarian media mogul Redstone (left photo).
Acts of friendship: CBS, also controlled by National Amusements, has decided to make love with YouTube, not war, via its official CBS channel on the video site, where it willingly posts everything from David Letterman monologues to weighty documentaries on the Victoria Secret Fashion Show. It’s even begun uploading full episodes of a few old shows (MacGyver, anyone?).
Acts of enmity: Viacom isn’t content with just dashing off an infinite number of takedown notices to remove Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert from YouTube–in March 2007, it sued the company for more than a billion dollars for massive copyright infringement. The suit drags on to this day.
Current state of the frenemyship: Terrible, if you’re talking about the Sumner Redstone who’s chairman of the board of Viacom. Copacetic, if it’s the Redstone who’s chairman of the board of CBS.
(Chen/Hurley photo by AP)
December 11th, 2008 at 6:05 am
Great list, I enjoyed that, thanks. ;-)
December 11th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Great job on this, Harry. Many of us have lived through the stuff you’ve written about here, but were we really paying attention? On some levels, yes, but we all tend to be revisionist historians to a certain degree. With this article you’ve put a stake in the ground. Would love to see you do a periodic update on the same 12 — maybe adding or deleting as new frenemies develop or others lose pertinence.
December 15th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
What about nVidia and AMD? It seems like that’s a big one.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Great article!
December 18th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Frenemies—- are they not just competitors? OR two persons/entities that have a mutual love hate relationship that shift from one end of teh spectrum to another….
December 23rd, 2008 at 1:03 am
Wow. Microsoft has many enemies.
December 30th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Not to be a grammar policeman, but it seems you spelled “enmity” wrong.
Oh, well. Pretty awesome article. That there are six pages containing Microsoft relationships says something….
May 4th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Wow, I immensely enjoyed this list. Microsoft leads the ranks with enemies on almost both ends of the list.
I’m missing the iFruad producers vs Apple on the list though. :P
http://kixtrix.com
May 8th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Microsoft and Nintendo! While it may not be cpu-based, nintendo helped microsoft get going with the xbox, which then completely left nintendo to branch out their own and is now nintendo’s biggest opponent (sorry sony). Not to mention how nintendo is so bitchy about making sure that nobody but themselves and add programs and games to their consoles, so there isn’t a nintendo game on the xbox and vise versa. And, Gates has famously said quote, “”There’s room for innovation (on the wii), but moving that controller around — it’s something that’s not mainstream for most games.” Who knows? Maybe Gates will give in to 114,000,000 dollars a year of motion-sensitivity and make a motion-sensitive Halo. YES.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:01 am
You forgot Google and Mozilla, google has always been a big but quiet supporter of firefox, and then they release Chrome…
September 27th, 2009 at 3:55 am
Hey, you have a great blog here! I’m definitely going to bookmark you! Thank you for your info.And this is bookmarkth.com site. It pretty much covers DoFollow Social Bookmark related stuff.
Thank.
November 4th, 2009 at 10:40 am
Great article!I enjoyed that, thanks. ;-)