YouTube - A product of Google.

[Tassadar]

Everyone's favorite once small company is now becoming a giant. Google recently announced a deal to purchase YouTube for a value of 1.65 billion dollars in stock.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Google, the Internet's leading search engine, announced Monday that it is buying popular online video site YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock.

YouTube, which was founded in February 2005, has quickly become the most well-known of several online video sites. More than 100 million videos, many of which are short videos created by the site's users, are downloaded a day on the site.


According to Internet research firm Hitwise, YouTube has about a 46 percent share of the online video market.

For Google (Charts), the purchase of YouTube gives the company the ability to tap into the potentially lucrative online video and social networking markets. Some analysts have criticized Google for relying too much on advertising tied to keyword searches.

The combination of Google and YouTube could further strengthen Google's dominance in online advertising, giving it an edge over rivals such as Yahoo! (Charts), Microsoft's (Charts) MSN and News Corp (Charts)., which owns the social networking site MySpace. Some analysts said Monday that Yahoo, Microsoft and News Corp. also had probably expressed interest in buying YouTube.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/10/09/technology/googleyoutube_deal/index.htm?cnn=yes

Kind of makes me feel sad. I used to like Google because it was the underdog, the small company started by a couple guys wanting to make things easier on the internets tubes. Now it's turning into a mega giant corporation. Well, that's capitalism I guess.
Discuss.

 

[Mr. Phonso]

all i can wonder is how much youtube is going to change if at all..

 

[Killface]

so... is youtube gonna change a bit? I heard that the site and google will be seperate, but will google start charging to view some movies... or upload content... or something along that line?

 

[Optimus Prime]

Now that there's money in Youtube, let's see how long until they get sued out the ass.

 

[Kaination]

Gootube anyone?

i think it's smart thing for youtube. Everyone COULD be like "youtube is a sellout wtf!"

but if you were seriously offered 1.65 billion dollars, would you take it?

i sure would

 

[DragonDude]

Now that there's money in Youtube, let's see how long until they get sued out the ass.

That was my first thought, lol.

They'll probably keep the name since it has stirred up so much hype, but I could see video.google.com redirecting to YouTube.

Google video was a pretty big failure and YouTube needed to be bought by someone soon to cover bandwidth costs, so I'm not really surprised.

 

[Kaination]

That was my first thought, lol.

They'll probably keep the name since it has stirred up so much hype, but I could see video.google.com redirecting to YouTube.

Google video was a pretty big failure and YouTube needed to be bought by someone soon to cover bandwidth costs, so I'm not really surprised.

I hope they switch the youtube player to the Google video player.

In my opinion, Youtube had popularity and Google video had the right player.

 

[frsrblch]

You would have to be insane not to accept a $1.65 billion dollar offer. That's like 1.32 billion cups of coffee, or a small coffee producing country, if real estate is your thing.

 

[sub]

That was my first thought, lol.

They'll probably keep the name since it has stirred up so much hype, but I could see video.google.com redirecting to YouTube.

Google video was a pretty big failure and YouTube needed to be bought by someone soon to cover bandwidth costs, so I'm not really surprised.

They were already sued by I believe Time Warner just days after the deal. It was either Time Warner or another movie studio.

 

[dan_esf_fanatic]

so... is youtube gonna change a bit? I heard that the site and google will be seperate, but will google start charging to view some movies... or upload content... or something along that line?

Now why would a giant corporation like Google pay all that money an extremely popular site with tons of videos just standing there waiting to be viewed by anyone for free? $$$$$$ Kaching $$$$$$

 

[Optimus Prime]

Now why would a giant corporation like Google pay all that money an extremely popular site with tons of videos just standing there waiting to be viewed by anyone for free? $$$$$$ Kaching $$$$$$

I'm sure they wouldn't have plunked that much money into something they don't think they can somehow generate revenue off of

 

[Jariroth]

Now why would a giant corporation like Google pay all that money an extremely popular site with tons of videos just standing there waiting to be viewed by anyone for free? $$$$$$ Kaching $$$$$$

Why would giant corporation like Google host one of the best Search engines and Emails to be used for free? Oh wait, They already do!
I don't know where they get all their money, but they sure get alot of it from somewhere.

 

[dan_esf_fanatic]

Ever heard of Google Earth?

 

[Jariroth]

Ever heard of Google Earth?

Sure, is that the gps program where there is a free version if you dont want to pay?

 

[J-Dude]

I personally hate this deal to the core. Screw advertising, Google is going to try and suck as much cash out of youtube users as they can. Of course, that's after going on a video genocide as they delete anything with copyrighted material as miniscule as a coke can in the picture. I really hope that they get rid of google-video rather than try and intigrate it with youtube. Youtube's player is extremely reliable. Google-Video's is cumbersome and cramped.
Likely it's going to become tiered. Free users have access to fan videos and such, while paying membership and gold and platinum membership gives you access to more video file-size and gives your videos a higher priority in searches or some corporate nonsense of that level.

It just has bad written all over it, and who knows how Nazi-ist Google will get when it comes to policing Youtube?