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Google will partner with "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane to create a new Google-distributed Web video series, the New York Times reports today. The Times story, already on the top of Techmeme, hails the deal as "innovative" and "a bold step into the distribution business," which is true — or at least was, when Valleywag and the rest of the Google-watching press reported the same news on August 17, 2007.

Almost a year later, the MacFarlane-Google deal — if it actually happens this time — is more an explanation as to why so many bright entrepreneurs are fleeing the company. At today's supersized, ultracorporate Google, good ideas can take so long to see the light of day, sometimes they need to be announced twice.