Google in Talks to Buy YouTube

tessaiga writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is in talks to buy YouTube for about $1.6 billion. YouTube users watch more that 100 million videos daily, and the site's market share tops that of similar services offered by Google and other popular Web sites. This comes after a story earlier this morning that co-founder Sergey Brin is pushing for Google to cut back on the volume of products being offered, complaining that 'I was getting lost in the sheer volume of the products we were releasing'. Guess Google Video is one of the products making the approved shortlist."

Comments

But they couldn't solve our puzzles!

[ClosedSource]

What do you want to bet that the programmers at YouTube would have never made it through Google's interview process?

Re:But they couldn't solve our puzzles!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this 'funny'? 'Insightful' is more like it. Youtube is a piece of technological crap, yet it meets a social need. Much like MySpace. And both are wildly popular. Yet Slashdot persists in its belief that programming is the center of the universe.

Re:But they couldn't solve our puzzles!

[SilentChris]

YouTube is another one of those oddities. Like MySpace. Or VHS even. None of them are best in class, but they achieved a critical mass and took it from there.

Stuff I hate about YouTube:

1.) Takes forever to load some videos. Google Video is lightening fast.
2.) Can't really shift to a point on the timeline. Unlike Google Video, it can't seem to pick up midstream. What's the point of even giving the user the option to move the timeline if you can't stream from that point?
3.) Sometimes you leave comments and they aren't saved.
4.) Regardless if the comments save or not, the page will completely refresh restarting the video. (No problem, you think -- I'll just fast forward to where I was. Wait, can't do that).
5.) Sometimes pages flat out won't load. View the historic pages for stuff like "most popular video" and you'll sometimes see this.

Not to mention the UI guys look like they threw up all over the screen, and the general content (like Google Video) is lacking. If you see one dumbass 14-year old kick someone in the crotch, you've seen them all. (On a sidenote, who are these teenagers that have all day to kick people in their crotch).

I'm hoping one of these days people will realize, just like Tamagotchies, pet rocks and the Tubthumping song, that the only reason sites like YouTube and MySpace prevade culture are because they're popular. It has nothing to do with great content or inherently good design. All you need nowadays apparently is crap code and a userbase willing to kick people in the crotch.

Re:But they couldn't solve our puzzles!

[rednip]

who are these teenagers that have all day to kick people in their crotch

uh, These guys

I'm hoping one of these days people will realize, just like Tamagotchies, pet rocks and the Tubthumping song, that the only reason sites like YouTube and MySpace prevade culture are because they're popular. It has nothing to do with great content or inherently good design.

Tell that to Craig's list as well. It's not 'how pretty', or 'technically advanced' a website is but how many people look at it, and how many people use it for what they want to present, even if it most of it isn't great, some stuff does shine (or at least funny as hell). Sure there are technical problems with YouTube, but they have the eyeballs, and the Google engineers should be able to fix it up quicker than anyone else.

Re:But they couldn't solve our puzzles!

[Mr2001]

Let's keep in mind that Google Video doesn't even allow you to post comments.

Incorrect! The comment feature is still labeled as new, but it's been available for a while now. Look on the right side of the page, below the download button and the description of the video. There's a list of links, "Playlist - Details - From user - Related - Comments[New!] - Flag as inappropriate".

Google's a moron?

[WilliamSChips]

I didn't expect that!

Re:Google's a moron?

[ergo98]

I didn't expect that!

Well you still shouldn't -- while it might come to pass, I'd take this story with a massive grain of salt (mountain sized). The story comes from one unnamed individual, and is then circulated by some people that have a long history of rumors that didn't come to pass.

I don't understand why they need to.

[celardore]

Surely they'd only be buying the YouTube name. Google has way more hardware, and an already succesful video product out there. Maybe they are trying to eliminate the competition, and get the ad revenue all for themselves. Is YouTube really worth that much to them though?

Re:I don't understand why they need to.

[TrippTDF]

I just made this sam argument to a co-worker. If google buys them, they keep the name and start dumping the copy-protected matierial. They can keep the "trusted" brand and then use it to push TV/Movies that you can buy... Apple has iPod/iTunes, MS has Zune/WMP, and Google needs something if they want to compete here.

My money has Google and MS getting slaughtered by Apple here.

Re:I don't understand why they need to.

[pyite]

My money has Google and MS getting slaughtered by Apple here.

Google is too smart to walk right into a battle with Apple. My guess is they will try to seek some mutually beneficial arrangement with Apple. Don't forget this.

Re:I don't understand why they need to.

[vertinox]

Is YouTube really worth that much to them though?

Maybe their "Don't be evil" clause also means keeping YouTube out of the hands of Newscorp.

Well

[valkabo]

Its funny how every day the lines between google and microsoft blur. If microsoft tried this an unholy hell would be released..

It makes sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Video is probably the first example that comes to mind of the emergent Yet Another Half-Baked Google Technology phenomenon. By buying YouTube, they get a best-of-breed player on their side without diverting more in-house R&D resources. Given their (Google's) cash reserves, it's the right thing to do.

Isn't it up to the programmers?

[ClosedSource]

"cut back on the volume of products being offered"

Didn't we learn last week that you can work on anything you want at Google?

Yeah...

[CheeseburgerBrown]

...it's amazing how not sucking works wonders for the way people interpret your actions and qualify the possible repercussions.

Re:Yeah...

[TheRaven64]

MS-DOS didn't suck too badly compared to CP/M.

Xenix didn't such compared to other UNIXes.

OS/2 didn't suck, and neither did Windows NT next to desktop UNIX or DR-DOS+GEM

Microsoft Word 2 didn't suck next to any of its competition.

Microsoft have released more products that don't suck than Google (although, to be fair, I suspect most of us have been forced to use more of the ones that do suck). Google search has gone downhill a lot in recent months; I'm frequently finding searches fail to return any useful information, or if they do it's buried on page 3-4 of the results. Google is a young company, and they haven't had the time to screw up as badly as MS yet.

Only a moron...

[patrixmyth]

Gotta love the related story on this one. Only a moron would buy Youtube, indeed.

YouTube links are the only "You gotta see this." links that I get that I actually open on occassion. I think Google is making a great move here, if it's true. Given the other recent story about Google allowing google home page elements to be posted in websites, YouTube is a natural eyeball catcher to pull in people off personal websites.

In other news ...

[tekkguy]

In other news, Google has voted successfully to change the company's motto from "Don't be Evil" to "The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world!"

Yeah, right.

[merreborn]

How'd that yahoo-facebook deal go? Not a single verification of the story in 2 weeks?

Whaddya know. Not all rumors are true. Last time, it was 'industry executives', this time it's 'a person familiar with the matter'.

The new name.

[Rob T Firefly]

They plan to call it "GooTube."

You don't want to know what the new logo looks like.

Re:The new name.

[Rob T Firefly]

Lol. Goo in my first language means "shit". So how would you like to view shittube?

I already have a television, thanks.

Am i the only one who thinks this makes sense?

[sam991]

Google video may be the technically superior service, but it is almost completely lacking in social interaction. Youtube encourages you to have a vlog, to post video responses etc. Google video (at least from the standpoint of a Youtube user) is a little cold.

Google may well have the hardware, but they've a lot to learn about what makes a site popular. Myspace has to be one of the ugliest sites around yet its popularity is ever soaring because it is social. Google video just is not.

At the end of the day, Youtube is synonymous with the online video hosting/sharing community and that is what Google are paying £850 million for. That and the ability to integrate with existing Google products (Google calendar & vlog combined? That's some powerful stuff right there.)

Uh oh..

[clickclickdrone]

Google look like their joining that happy band of companies that grew so big and had so much cash burning a hole in their pocket that they started buying insane companies for insane prices.
1. Invent Google algorithm
2. Invent Adsense
3. Profit!
4. Profit!
5. Buy loss making company for huge amount of money
6. No more profit!