The competition to shape the viewing habits of tomorrow's media junkies stepped up a notch today as Yahoo formally launched its video search service.

The application is the latest in a string of products that allows users to search for video footage online. Users of Yahoo's website type in search terms and are then presented with matching results from content providers which include MTV, the music video channel, and Reuters, the news agency.

Other companies, such as Google, and Blinkx.tv also run websites that allow viewers to cherrypick content ranging from news bulletins to Hollywood movie trailers and home videos.

Together with gadgets such as TiVo - the box that automatically finds and digitally records hundreds of hours of television - experts say such websites will shape the way in which future coach potatoes inform, educate and entertain themselves.

"Yahoo's new video service is just the beginning - the tip of the iceberg," said Theresa Wise, of Accenture, the consultants.

"We are seeing, through the internet and through satellite TV services a definite shift in the way that people watch television. People in the industry are realising that companies such as Yahoo, Google and Microsoft occupy gatekeeper positions which are going to become massively important.

"The kind of question people are asking themselves now is just what would happen if Google were to strike a deal with Hollywood?"

Yahoo will also give people the opportunity to access video content via RSS feeds, which allow users to customise cyberspace by picking relevant information sources and have content automatically directed to them.

Yahoo's video search has been launched in a test mode for the past five months, but it remains unclear how companies will eventually opt to make money from these type of products.

Search engines have been quick to incorporate bolted on features such as aggregate news services to drive users to their advertising arms, through which they make the vast majority of their money.

But analysts say video search could push search engines to emulate satellite TV operations, which favour cross-promotions to increase viewer numbers.

"TV companies could choose to run ads on their electronic programme guides, the pages which list schedules. But more often they choose to cross-promote movies, which can be worth more," Mrs Wise said. "Companies like Yahoo and Google could move in the same direction."

For the moment, Yahoo have said that their service is "always free at this point". Google has told content providers that they can "name any price" for their videos. Google then takes a percentage.

Meanwhile, Yahoo, which started life in the early 1990s as "Jerry's guide to the world wide web", a single page run by two university students, and now claims to be the most popular website in the world, hopes that users are drawn to a service that offers the opportunity to customise cyberspace and make sense of the mass of information available online.

Betsy Morgan, of CBS News, one of Yahoo's partners, said: "This relationship greatly expands the number of users who will have immediate access to our vast reservoir of current and historical broadband CBS News video - all for free."

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