Yesterday Google and Verizon unveiled a joint policy proposal, meant to set some ground rules for what companies and users can and cannot do online.

For the sake of brevity, this post will focus on one possible area where this proposal, if enacted, would have an effect: online video.

Web video has exploded in popularity over the last few years, with Google’s YouTube the clear market leader. However, television network websites have started to offer competitive long-form content of their own, and Hulu.com, which is owned by NBC Universal, news Corp. and Disney, has becoming the de facto leader in professionally produced content.

There are also many smaller companies, like My Damn Channel and Funny or Die, that are competing in the web video space.

So what would this policy proposal mean for them?

In the short term: not much. Longer term however it gets murky.

Google insists that it will keep all of its products on the “public internet,” presumable including YouTube. If however a site like Hulu were to start getting priority service through Verizon (or whichever operator it cuts a deal with) could Google really afford to stand back and let it happen?

On the conference call with reporters, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg saidf that “other services” that could get priority access would not include sites on the public internet… like Hulu.

However, hat those services may be still remains unclear. He used the example of the Metropolitan Opera delivering a 3D performance, and while this seems unique, it does leave open the possibility that future web video sites could find a way to take advantage of paying for higher speed.

Think of it like this: many companies, including Apple, seem to think that the future is in applications. Right now Hulu and YouTube are available on the “public internet,” as Verizon and Google call it. In a few years however, they may be available to your PC, phone, TV set or tablet computer almost exclusively via apps, rather than through a web address. It is very possible that Verizon could decide these apps are not part of the “public internet” and could offer priority service for the company delivering the content, if it so chooses.

The losers would be startups like Funny or Die, which may not be able to afford paying for priority, service, and thus get stuck with inferior video, and consumers, to whom the cost of this service will be passed on.