PC World reports that Google is about to acquire YouTube for $1.6 billion. Although this is just a rumour, sources close to YouTube say the deal is in the final stages.
It will be interesting to see how YouTube will change and if Google Video continues to exist after the deal.
In September, YouTube had a market share of 46 percent in the U.S., while Google Video had only 11 percent, so the deal will bring a lot of new users to Google and a revenue source to YouTube.
Update: Now it's official. "Google announced today that it has agreed to acquire YouTube, the consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos through a Web experience, for $1.65 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction. Following the acquisition, YouTube will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate community."
A deal like this would probably cause no change to youtube. Maybe just a name change like, "googletube".
ReplyDeleteyoutube by itself is doomed - as soon as it becomes profitable, it becomes worth suing the pants off of. It needs to be rescued by a company with alot of money and time to figure out what to do to clean it up, so it can be made safely profitable to exploit all those hits it gets. enter Google :)
ReplyDeleteUpdate!!!
ReplyDeleteGoogle did aquire YouTube for $ 1.65 Billion. WOW is all I can say!
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aHMkfNNtCmcU&refer=home
yup, it's official now, google did buy it. that's sweet
ReplyDeleteGoogle. Are they the new Microsoft?
ReplyDeleteYa google is the new Microsoft, but uhmm, they figured out how to be what Microsoft could never be.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad this has happened anyway since theres alot of mess in Youtube just now and as anonymous said above, they could get the pants sued off them because of some stuff on there.
ReplyDeleteGoogle can really help to fix this by supplying additonal resources for them.
Maybe this is why Google have played around with an interface similar to Youtubes (still use it cause its better than the older interface by miles!)
writely is goin under maintanence 10/10, and on their official writely announcement they were giving ideas on what to do while writely is down.. one of the ideas is "check out the featured videos on You Tube (or Google Video, if you prefer ;)"
ReplyDeletelink to the page:
http://writely.blogspot.com/2006/10/scheduled-maintenance-for-october-10th.html