Google Snaps Up YouTube in All Stock Deal

[Sean Sands]

Google Snaps Up YouTube in All Stock Deal

Google announced on Monday a $1.65 billion dollar deal to acquire YouTube just hours after the company announced three separate deals to protect against the threat of copyright-infringement lawsuits.

YouTube, which in the middle of 2005 was not even ranked [http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=2y&size=large&compare_sites=&y=t&url=youtube.com#top] among the top 100,000 websites, enjoyed a meteoric rise over the past year to become one of the top visited websites in the world. Google's purcahse of YouTube marks the largest single investment yet by the cash rich company.

The two companies have been competing in the online video market with YouTube developing as the clear winner. Though there have been widespread concerns about YouTube's ability to defend itself against potential copyright suits, the company announced partnerships with Universal Music Group, CBS Corp. and Sony BMG Music Entertainment just prior to the Google acquisition.

According to Chad Hurley, co-founder and CEO of YouTube which will retain its brand and all 67 employees, "I?m confident that with this partnership we?ll have the flexibility and resources needed to pursue our goal of building the next-generation platform for serving media worldwide,"

Source: MSNBC.com [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15196982/]

Permalink

 

[Bongo Bill]

This is quite significant. It means that Google now owns the free online videos market, and has two of the three strongest brands in videos poised to attach to its own paid video service. This, plus iTunes, might just give the market the mass it needs to tip us over into the Glorious Online Video Revolución, wherein viewers set their schedules, product placement becomes the dominant form of advertising (which, incidentally, now becomes better-targeted, which means there's less of it), and even more competition improves quality and variety of all the shows.

Alternately, this could be a huge flop, and all Google gets out of it is a brand and a gigantic copyright lawsuit. But that seems less likely.

Google as a media distributor, hm? However the cards fall, this will be interesting to watch.

 

[Goofonian]

Its only a matter of time before google takes over the world.

As for product placement becoming the dominant form of advertising, that will never happen. As soon as web based TV distribution becomes big enough, they will start inserting ad breaks into shows the same way they always have been and use DRM to prevent you from removing them or (god forbid) fast forwarding them.

I think a complete shift towards "on demand" television would be the worst thing that could ever happen. Crappy shows get made because stations have to fill 24 hours of broadcast space a day, but this also allows for truly great new shows to emerge seemingly out of nowhere.
Allowing to viewer to choose what they want to watch and when will only lead to the same sorts of problems we have with video games right now, where all we get are sequels and cookie cutter clones and even when new interesting games emerge, you can be damn sure they will have sequels and clones not far off on the horizon.

I actually really think GameTap is onto something, they just don't have enough support yet. If there was a service available for you to play all the games you want for a set subscription fee (similar to what cable tv offers for tv shows and old movies) then not only would I be able to get the blockbuster titles same as I do now, but I would also be able to play the games that I'm less interested in, that right now I'm never keen to spend my hard earned money on. This would allow truly talented developers that may not have the bankroll to produce a AAA title to get the exposure they deserve and I'm sure it would go a long way to rectifying the exponential decrease in game sales vs time that is oh so common in the industry right now.