Dailymotion might comfortably be described as a lesser-known, lesser-traveled and lesser-populated YouTube, given that both sites offer up roughly the same thing in short-form video content. But France's Orange (News - Alert) SA, who owns a minority stake in the firm, could be looking to get out of the operation, and said minority stake could be offered up to Microsoft, among other firms.

Orange is, at last report, eager to expand the Dailymotion brand outside of France, and wants in particular to bring it to the United States so as to compete with Google (News - Alert) and YouTube. One of the most recent such efforts to do that involved selling a majority stake in the company to Yahoo, a move that was reportedly blocked by the French government directly. But Stephane Richard, Orange's CEO, took to a French television channel to note that the company was eager to step into a wider role, backed up by a “major U.S. Web player” with news of a potential partnership. Richard subsequently noted that talks were “continuing” with Microsoft, and that Richard was “very hopeful” said talks would succeed.

Orange's plans for Microsoft include several different arrangements, at last report, one of which focuses on selling a 10 percent stake to Microsoft, and requiring Microsoft to add Dailymotion to its array of devices and services, such as Windows Phone (News - Alert) and potentially even Xbox One. But Orange isn't pinning all its hopes on Microsoft; reports indicate that the company is also talking to Singapore Telecommunications as well as the Canal Plus arm of Vivendi SA, though it's been noted that the Singapore talks aren't as far along as the Microsoft equivalent are as yet.

Moves to advance the company are proving somewhat difficult, however, given that at last report the French government owns a 27 percent stake in Orange itself. This may have been behind a further remark from Richard in which he declares that Orange wants to “...keep the majority of Dailymotion until further notice” and further notes that Orange wants to “...stay the master of Dailymotion's destiny.”

While Dailymotion is a fairly substantial operation, counting over 25 million videos total to its credit over a wide variety of topics, that really pales in comparison to YouTube (News - Alert)'s own numbers, which make it clear that there are over 100 hours of video uploaded every minute to the site. Dailymotion would likely have to ramp up its numbers on a grand scale—or otherwise pull in some exciting originals—to be seen as a competitor to YouTube in any credible fashion. Still, Microsoft has been seen with a clear interest in terms of getting more entertainment content in play, especially for the Xbox One, so a partnership with Orange and Dailymotion may not be out of line. Some have projected that Dailymotion could have some unique advantages of its own in terms of longer videos and high-definition video handling that may put it ahead of a lot of the pack, particularly Vimeo (News - Alert), but against YouTube itself, that may prove a tougher sell.

Only time will tell just where this all ends up, or if Microsoft has an interest in bringing the partnership forward. But it's just as clear that there's some exciting potential here, and it may be that Dailymotion is about to be more front and center than previously thought.