Google Buys YouTube for $1.65 Billion

Over 30 readers wrote about Google's purchase of YouTube today for $1.65 Billion, as rumored last week. The all-stock transaction is the single largest purchase in the company's 8-year history. The move follows on the heels of Google's convincing Sony and Warner Music to put music videos online for free. Reportedly, YouTube will retain its brand and all its 67 employees, including co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen.

Comments

Re:So ungoogle

[ndansmith]

This is so ungoogle. Google builds, not buys.

  No, Google buys too.

Re:A discussion other people just had

[jez9999]

I had a quick discussion with my co-workers too, and they were of the mind TEN MINUTES AGO that Google needs the following:

a. the users and more importantly
b. the usage pattern of these users

Quite. And I wonder about b. How useful, really, is a video hosting site in determining social patterns of users? It's quite obvious that people will be drawn more to zany, weird, sexual, entertaining content. It's ESPECIALLY questionable when Google already has, um, video.google.com. I already use that instead of YouTube, I think it's a better implementation of the same idea - and it already has a large userbase. I can only guess Google bought YouTube to increase its shard of the market (dramatically), but as has been said elsewhere I was puzzled at the amount they paid for it, given its lack of profit and the fact they'll probably be binning YouTube's code and using video.google.com instead.