Word on the street suggests that Google is in talks to scoop up YouTube for an estimated $1.6B. Up until this point, YouTube has denied all rumors of a possible takeover by another company. This report is certainly unexpected, and equally hard to believe. Google has their own video sharing service, and YouTube comes at a steep price: it is unclear how they plan to rake in a profit. Advertising can only go so far with the amount of daily traffic YouTube brings in, and Google would be putting themselves on the line if anyone decided to sue YouTube for the sheer number of obvious copyright infringements that are prevalent on the site. I suppose we shall see where this one goes.Google to buy YouTube?
Word on the street suggests that Google is in talks to scoop up YouTube for an estimated $1.6B. Up until this point, YouTube has denied all rumors of a possible takeover by another company. This report is certainly unexpected, and equally hard to believe. Google has their own video sharing service, and YouTube comes at a steep price: it is unclear how they plan to rake in a profit. Advertising can only go so far with the amount of daily traffic YouTube brings in, and Google would be putting themselves on the line if anyone decided to sue YouTube for the sheer number of obvious copyright infringements that are prevalent on the site. I suppose we shall see where this one goes.
1. Well, I love Google, and I think YouTube is awesome (I don't love them because they took down an interview from Late Night with Conan a couple weeks ago...) because I think it's the video sharing site that people go to not only because it's popular, but because it works amazingly. But the difference between YouTube's popularity and other sites' popularity is that YouTube isn't some kind of trend - it's just a site that is really good at what it does, sharing videos - whether illegal or just videos that your buddy put up from a crazy party last weekend.
But Google buying it...? I don't know - it's not going to make any less of a non-trend, but it might get Google into some trouble with the whole copyright stuff you mentioned... I just hope that Google doesn't start to take over everything that doesn't exactly need to be taken over.
Posted at 4:43AM on Oct 7th 2006 by modenadude