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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.

424 comments

  1. hay tabla by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    fr1st p0st!!!

    hay tabla

    1. Re:hay tabla by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      in soviet russia....

      youtube buys google

  2. Hooray! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Google uber alles!

  3. So Google is going to become... by sehlat · · Score: 5, Funny

    a series of 'tubes?

    1. Re:So Google is going to become... by arachnoprobe · · Score: 1

      yes - YourTubes and MyTubes!

    2. Re:So Google is going to become... by Dachannien · · Score: 3, Funny

      yes - YourTubes and MyTubes!

      Strangely enough, though, they're still in beta.

    3. Re:So Google is going to become... by fullphaser · · Score: 1

      Yes Mr. Stevens, in fact it is going to become tubes, however, this will not effect your gmail, that fails to load all on its own

      --
      Did someone say cake?
    4. Re:So Google is going to become... by russ1337 · · Score: 5, Funny

      GooTube

      eww.

    5. Re:So Google is going to become... by nog_lorp · · Score: 1

      It would be less gross if YouTube had acquired Google. Yougle, thats much better!

    6. Re:So Google is going to become... by eclectro · · Score: 2, Funny

      GooTube

      Goobe.

      You heard it here first.

      --
      Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
    7. Re:So Google is going to become... by vivek7006 · · Score: 5, Funny

      GooTube

      This shit is funny. GooTube in Hindi literary means asshole.

      Goo --> Shit
      Tube --> Tube
      GooTube --> Tube from where you shit

      Sorry, I am drunk on monday afternoon :)

    8. Re:So Google is going to become... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Apparently someone thought this was informative.

      "Whoa, what the hell was that?"

      Don't worry, just another chunk of my respect for Slashdot mods breaking off, floating away into the great abyss.

    9. Re:So Google is going to become... by BobSutan · · Score: 1

      Nope. Its called youporn.

      --
      "On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
    10. Re:So Google is going to become... by FooBarWidget · · Score: 1

      MyTube? Surely you mean iTube.

    11. Re:So Google is going to become... by Lord+Kano · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      So not only do they come via the H1-B program and depress IT wages and provide piss poor telephone customer support but now they're beating us to the punch when it comes to potty humor!

      Great...

      LK

      --
      "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
    12. Re:So Google is going to become... by jacquesm · · Score: 1

      does this mean that google is now officially going down the tubes ?

      that didn't take very long then. There must be much less evil ways to spend 1.6 billion dollars...

    13. Re:So Google is going to become... by anandsr · · Score: 1

      When did either of these words arrive from hindi.
      Tube is from English, everybody knows that.
      And Goo, well it may not originate from English, but even in 1900 they were using it. It also definitely has no Hindi origin.

      I guess this word has been in use in the parent posters social circle, but to claim that this is hindi is funny.

      Yes, lots of Indians have been brought up in so much Anglicised societies, that they wouldn't be able to differentiate english and hindi words. Lots of these guys & gals wouldn't be able to speak a single sentence of pure hindi. Pure Hindi as in hindi not containing English words. I am not talking about Pure Hindi as in not using Urdu words where Hindi equivalent exist but are not so common, which is far more difficult. Actually the dialect spoken by these people has been named Hinglish.

    14. Re:So Google is going to become... by colin8651 · · Score: 0

      So is Google; a match made in heaven.

    15. Re:So Google is going to become... by nschubach · · Score: 1

      I'm sure a certain "unnamed" company either already owns that, or they will lay claim to it after all is said and done.

      --
      Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
    16. Re:So Google is going to become... by leabre · · Score: 1

      I was thinking more along the lines of Yoogle

      Thanks,
      Leabre

    17. Re:So Google is going to become... by arachnoprobe · · Score: 1
      ...respect for Slashdot mods..


      wow, you still believe in the theory of evolution, too?
  4. YouTube not evil! by mrbanzai · · Score: 5, Insightful

    SO glad that YouTube will now be sheltered by "the good guys" ... assuming they stay the good guys *cautious glance over shoulder*

    1. Re:YouTube not evil! by vertinox · · Score: 5, Insightful

      SO glad that YouTube will now be sheltered by "the good guys" ... assuming they stay the good guys *cautious glance over shoulder*

      I'm more than happy with that. At least now Youtube will have Google Adsense ads rather than Myspaces "epileptic punch the monkey you win a frigging iPod PS3 viagra sweepstakes" flash banner ads with 400 double click pop ups and unders.

      --
      "I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
      -Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
    2. Re:YouTube not evil! by WeblionX · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yeah, it's a bit overdone. Between the monkey, the iPod, and the PS3, you should have more than enough blood flow to not need viagra.

      --
      (\(\
      (=_=) Bani!
      (")")
    3. Re:YouTube not evil! by zenithcoolest · · Score: 1

      Looks like u r really annoyed with ads... :)

    4. Re:YouTube not evil! by nog_lorp · · Score: 1

      Shit! How will I vent my monkey-induced anger now?

    5. Re:YouTube not evil! by Nimey · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      So why aren't you using an ad-blocker?

      --
      Hail Eris, full of mischief...

      E pluribus sanguinem
    6. Re:YouTube not evil! by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      So why aren't you using an ad-blocker?

      So why should we have to? That's like putting mercury in the water supply and blaming everyone for not having water filters and chelation therapy handy.

      --
      That is all.
    7. Re:YouTube not evil! by mythosaz · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Things like YouTube (and for that matter Google) don't exist if there isn't a revinue source behind them. There are certainly labor-of-love good-of-all-mankind websites with spectacular content on them (Wikipedia comes to mind), but most of us have bandwidth bills to pay and can't depend on the kindness of strangers.

      Oh, sure, we all skip our commercials and block our popups, but when nobody sees those ads, we're going to be one step closer to DRINK COCA COLA in neon on the moon.

      I don't mind lending an advertiser my ear if they can advertise tastefully, and in return they provide funding to My Favorite Distracting Thing on Television/Web/Radio(tm) so they can make a few more episodes.

    8. Re:YouTube not evil! by walt-sjc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I see it a little differently. Some modern ads have become so obnoxios that you just can't sit through them. Some are just annoyingly loud with horrible, harsh music or speech, or quickly flash 47 mini video clips in 15 seconds giving you an instant headache... I suppose the ad agency thought they were doing an attention grabber, but instead they have evoked an instant hatred of whatever product was being advertized. On the web, is there anyone that doesn't have a total hatred of X10?

      Use tactful, creative, intelligent ads that are non-intrusive and I won't be blocking / skipping them.

      I was watching a football game this sunday and saw an ad for a car that was done up like a drug ad - guy who is normally clostraphobic in small cars finds the new car roomy enough - at the end he goes into a field of wildflowers with a puppy and the model name of the car is shown with the MPG shown in small print much like drugs show the dosage. It was whitty, creative, and not obnoxious at all. I actually backed it up with Tivo and showed it to my wife who also got a kick out of it.

    9. Re:YouTube not evil! by AmberBlackCat · · Score: 1

      I just hope they don't screw it up, making it super efficient but no fun.

    10. Re:YouTube not evil! by Mr.+Capris · · Score: 1

      Smack the monkey, like we all do...http://homepage.ntlworld.com/burton.family/lo cal/smackmonkey.html

      --
      Have you seen the arrow?
    11. Re:YouTube not evil! by monkey_dongle · · Score: 1

      adblock is your friend...

    12. Re:YouTube not evil! by TheoMurpse · · Score: 1
      At least now Youtube will have Google Adsense ads rather than Myspaces "epileptic punch the monkey you win a frigging iPod PS3 viagra sweepstakes" flash banner ads with 400 double click pop ups and unders.
      Ads? What are these "ads" you speak of? I don't see those because I use Opera.

      If you don't catch the joke, then you can FOAD.
    13. Re:YouTube not evil! by UltraAyla · · Score: 1

      The upside of adsense is that maybe it will keep youtube in the black, keeping around a service that is actually rather handy. There has been a lot of talk about youtube not making enough money for its bandwidth bills, and maybe the guys over in google's adsense dept can help fix that.

    14. Re:YouTube not evil! by iwsnet · · Score: 0

      I'm glad Google is going to keep this independent and not slap their Google Video name on it. They can give Apple a run in the video arena.

    15. Re:YouTube not evil! by cuantar · · Score: 2, Funny

      In an ideal world, all water would be perfectly fresh, and there would be no pop-up ads on the Net. However, if the mercury's already in the water and said filters are easy to come by and available for free, it seems quite unwise not to use them because "the water should be clean." Ads abound, and ad blockers make them go away. There's no sense in complaining about a problem that can be solved in a few clicks.

      --
      Legalize it.
    16. Re:YouTube not evil! by jxyama · · Score: 1
      >I was watching a football game this sunday and saw an ad for a car that was done up like a drug ad - guy who is normally clostraphobic in small cars finds the new car roomy enough - at the end he goes into a field of wildflowers with a puppy and the model name of the car is shown with the MPG shown in small print much like drugs show the dosage. It was whitty, creative, and not obnoxious at all. I actually backed it up with Tivo and showed it to my wife who also got a kick out of it.

      ...but didn't do a very good job making you remember what car it was. :P (It's Nissan.)

    17. Re:YouTube not evil! by Soporific · · Score: 1

      I would have to agree with you on the ads that flash 8 zillion images in a row. I'm pretty quick but most of the time I can't figure out what the images are if they are only on screen for .5 second apiece. In the end they just end up irritating me.

      ~S

    18. Re:YouTube not evil! by thegiorgio · · Score: 1

      Yeah but that doesn't work with the ipod mini...

      --
      -- Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world; it's the only thing that ever has.
    19. Re:YouTube not evil! by Urkki · · Score: 1
      So why aren't you using an ad-blocker?

      So why should we have to?

      Same reaseon we "have to" skip/fast forward over commercials on TV.
    20. Re:YouTube not evil! by managementboy · · Score: 1

      Ha, ha, why don't you load it up to YouTube?

      Oh boy am I funny today...

    21. Re:YouTube not evil! by rizole · · Score: 1

      Thanks.

    22. Re:YouTube not evil! by Ginger+Unicorn · · Score: 1

      no one's blaming you for anything. they're just saying that for almost no effort, the problem can become a non issue for you. unless you want to cut of your nose to spite your face just to make a point, good luck with that, i'm sure anyone gives a shit.

      --
      (1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
    23. Re:YouTube not evil! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well this is may be completely off topic, but please will someone tell Mindspring to increase their advertising budget? They have been running the same moronic ad for months. You know the stupid one with the idiot that says 'geeks get it done but nerds don't and we're geeks'. I change the channel everytime that ad starts.

      Oh, and the intel duo core ads with the so called dancers that look like they have a live wire stuck up their backside.

      </OffTopic>
    24. Re:YouTube not evil! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I laugh every time the guy backs his seat up into the other guy holding the cake. Does that make me a bad person?

    25. Re:YouTube not evil! by Rowanyote · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately that hatred works nearly as well, or possibly better than appreciation of the add. Got this out of Social Psychology class: If a commercial irritates you enough, it implants a reaction. For a while, when you go to the store you will see the product and remember that it pissed you off and not buy it (a negative reaction). But after a while (a pretty short time for many people) the active memory of being angry at a product will fade, but you will still have a feeling (neutral reaction) when you see it. Lacking the concious memory cue of being angry, you are more likely to read that reaction as positive and favor the product over it's competitors. I loved that class, I learned a lot about low level mind control and how to look for it.

    26. Re:YouTube not evil! by bit01 · · Score: 1

      I don't mind lending an advertiser my ear if they can advertise tastefully, and in return they provide funding to My Favorite Distracting Thing on Television/Web/Radio(tm) so they can make a few more episodes.

      Advertising pays for nothing. All you're doing is paying twice, once in time to watch/skip the ad and twice in the increased price of the product to pay for the ad. Not to mention totally destroying the content you thought you were watching.

      I prefer to pay once for my media.

      And tasteful ad's? Please get real. The whole point of an ad is to be obtrusive, subliminal ad's don't work.

      ---

      The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".

  5. cool by szembek · · Score: 3, Interesting

    will video.google.com still exist as it is I wonder?

    --
    nothing
    1. Re:cool by garcia · · Score: 4, Informative

      CNN says it will.

    2. Re:cool by chroot_james · · Score: 1

      I would guess the interfaces would at least be unified. Perhaps youtube will inherit the ability to download uploaded files in some format your platform knows how to handle. I would also guess that any google accounts will become automatic youtube accounts and versa vice. Maybe this would also include putting a gtalk capability into youtube so we can all tell brookers how great she is or isn't.

      --
      Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
    3. Re:cool by Tony+Hoyle · · Score: 1

      Google made a complete dogs breakfast of unifying the accounts on blogspot. For a long period it was impossible for people whos accounts had been 'upgraded' to 'blogger beta' to post on non-beta blogs *at all*.

      They're still basically running two sites in parallel and it's a bit of a mess, but at least you can generally post (although you have to register for a google account to post to a 'beta' blog, which many are unwilling to do).

    4. Re:cool by zenithcoolest · · Score: 1

      The article says that Youtube will act as independent and there is no mention of joining or having a unified interface

    5. Re:cool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Yes. This was confirmed on the conference call.

      There's a stream of it at http://investor.google.com/webcast.html

    6. Re:cool by Ougarou · · Score: 1
      This might be problematic. Google keeps putting their Google account on various services. But part of being in a community is having "an account there". So as you say, many people will be unwilling create a Google account.

      But still, as the full staff will be retained, then this is just a good economic buy. I think they probably won't put Google accounts on there any time soon.

    7. Re:cool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have to wonder if Google Video and Youtube will merge their databases, but simply have different interfaces to not confuse users who are already used to Google Video or Youtube.

    8. Re:cool by DikSeaCup · · Score: 1

      I was just thinking, "Great, YouTube is owned by Google but still it's own thing. So I still have to go to two different places when I want to find a particular video ... "

  6. Hmmmm by jhjmonnee · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The bubble will burst on this purchase. There's too much copyright infringement going on @ Youtube.

    --
    hiphop-universe.com
    1. Re:Hmmmm by motank · · Score: 5, Insightful

      well the mpaa and riaa might have been itching to pick on poor little youtube but do they wanna pick a fight with google? i expect google will force these companies to deal with it and accept the internet isn't gonna go away (and share some ad revenue)

    2. Re:Hmmmm by GigsVT · · Score: 1

      A lot of it may be fair use, but there's still a lot of outright infringement.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    3. Re:Hmmmm by vertinox · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The bubble will burst on this purchase. There's too much copyright infringement going on @ Youtube.

      You mean Google's images, cache, and even video doesn't run into the same problems?

      I think it is safe to safe Google has enough IP lawyers and knowhow to take care of any problems they run into.

      --
      "I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
      -Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
    4. Re:Hmmmm by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Blockquoth the AC:

      i expect google will force these companies to deal with it and accept the internet isn't gonna go away (and share some ad revenue)

      That's one possible outcome. Another is that Google, already treading a very fine line with several of its existing offerings, has just taken a step too far and is about to be slapped down hard.

      If I were a betting man, I would actually bet against Google on this one. Admittedly, that is partly because I don't like the way they've started taking liberties with others' work and assuming something is OK as long as they're the guys doing it. But mainly, it's objective analysis: Google have some good products, but they have little that's unique, and none of their big revenue generators has a great barrier to entry. They're currently target number one for several other big tech firms, and fighting on all fronts, and I'm sure Sun Tzu had something to say about the wisdom of that approach.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    5. Re:Hmmmm by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The bubble will burst on this purchase. There's too much copyright infringement going on @ Youtube.

      And more importantly, now there is someone to sue. Someone with lots and lots of money, so all those $200K per infringement civil awards actually have a chance of being paid out. Watch for Hollywood to their absolute damndest to take Google's IPO money the same way the RIAA took mp3.com's $200M of IPO cash.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    6. Re:Hmmmm by shitdrummer · · Score: 1

      But Google have a plan.

      1. Buy Youtube
      2. ????
      3. Profit

      Just how can they make a profit from youtube? That's an awful lot of advertising google are going to need to sell to recoup their investment.

      Could this be a sign of a new .com boom?

      Shitdrummer.

    7. Re:Hmmmm by timeOday · · Score: 2, Informative
      Google has answered your ???? with "advertising." And it is working:
      Google Inc.'s second-quarter profit seems likely to erase any lingering doubts about which Internet company rules the Web.

      While rivals eBay Inc. and Yahoo Inc. merely matched analysts' earnings expectations, Google on Thursday soared well beyond Wall Street's financial hurdle - just like the online search engine leader has done in all but one quarter since it went public nearly two years ago.

      "Google is clearly winning the battle," said Internet analyst Derek Brown of Pacific Growth Equities. "These are almost logic-defying results."

      The Mountain View, Calif.-based company earned $721.1 million, or $2.33 per share, during the three months ended in June, more than doubling its net income of $342.8 million, or $1.19 per share, at the same time last year.

      Excluding expenses for employee stock compensation and several other one-time items, Google said it earned $2.49 per share - well above the average estimate of $2.22 per share among 32 analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.

      Google's search engine has been hitting on all cylinders for so long that investors almost seem to take its high-powered performance for granted.

      It marks the seventh time in eight quarters as a public company that Google has beat Wall Street's expectations, even though its management insists the search engine isn't being steered by investors' relentless push for higher profit.

      Revenue for the period totaled $2.46 billion, a 77 percent increase from $1.38 billion a year ago.

      That good enough for you?
    8. Re:Hmmmm by wondafucka · · Score: 1
      well the mpaa and riaa might have been itching to pick on poor little youtube but do they wanna pick a fight with google? i expect google will force these companies to deal with it and accept the internet isn't gonna go away (and share some ad revenue)

      Or they will force YouTube to deal with it. Either way, the infernet won't go away.

    9. Re:Hmmmm by Haeleth · · Score: 1

      well the mpaa and riaa might have been itching to pick on poor little youtube but do they wanna pick a fight with google?

      Probably. The AAP is already suing Google for copyright infringement over their book search thing, and the RIAA/MPAA have shown themselves to be considerably more litigation-happy than the AAP.

    10. Re:Hmmmm by DoorFrame · · Score: 1

      Does google still have "IPO money" any more? At this point, I think they're just in to plain old regular money.

    11. Re:Hmmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The bubble will burst on this purchase. There's too much copyright infringement going on @ Youtube.

      YouTube will generate a huge amount of advertising revenue, especially with Google's AdSense. Perhaps what Google is looking to do is use the cash from ads to acquire licenses for the copyrighted material. Then Google could broadcast content on the internet without charging per video (like Apple iTMS).

    12. Re:Hmmmm by ClamIAm · · Score: 1

      Have you ever visited Google Video? Yeah, no possibility for infringement there. No sir.

    13. Re:Hmmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except for the recently accounced deals to allow users to share Universal, Sony BMG, and CBS Content...
      http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/8004.cfm

    14. Re:Hmmmm by hypnagogue · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, with Google's deep pockets, there is NO chance that the awards will ever be paid out. You seem to have missed U.S. vs Microsoft: given sufficiently deep pockets, you can keep a case alive and churning through the legal morass of the court system indefinitely.

      Prediction-the-first: this will be settled out-of-court, and along the lines of a statutory license.
      Prediction-the-second: you will watch GoogleTV, and the copyright holders will love you for it.
      Prediction-the-third: in the face of TiVo-enabled departures from a supportable advertising model, traditional TV broadcasting will end up losing out since Google will be able to provide exact viewer measurements and demographics and be able to target the most coveted consumer groups.

      --
      Liberty you never use is liberty you lose.
    15. Re:Hmmmm by EvanED · · Score: 1

      Maybe you haven't noticed, but Google IS facing trouble, and HAS faced trouble, based upon its caches and book links.

      And this is even more blazen in some situations because in the other case the content authors can at least tell Google to not index, via robots.txt. To keep your stuff off YouTube would require constantly monitoring what is up there and reporting it.

    16. Re:Hmmmm by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

      Does google still have "IPO money" any more? At this point, I think they're just in to plain old regular money.

      Yes. Unlike most IPO's where the majority of the dollars go to the underwriters and their clients, google did a kind of auction that resulted in almost the entire take going into their pockets, not wallstreet's. So they've got billions of "IPO money" in the bank and will have for the forseeable future unless they get let someone screw them like mp3.com was screwed.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    17. Re:Hmmmm by nevergleam · · Score: 1

      IANAL, so someone please clarify: Can the **AAs also sue the Youtube creators who now own 1.65 billion in Google stock, or is their a statute of limitations on copyright infringement? Can they be held liable since they did not directly control what users uploaded?

    18. Re:Hmmmm by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

      Its called being incorporated. Except in the most extreme cases, the owners and operators of a corporation are shielded from criminal and civil liability for actions of the corporation. That's why shareholders don't get sued when the company they own shares in does something illegal. Similarly, the owners of youtube were never at risk in the first place, only the corporation itself and that risk was transferred to google along with all the other assets of the youtube corporation.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    19. Re:Hmmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Copyright infringement is one thing, that can be sorted out with cease and desist letters and cash. Entertainment companies are ruthless but they know how to make deals with each other. Not talking about RIAA suing grandmothers-- that's something else-- I'm talking about the megacorps working it out amongst themselves.

      The real danger is the next "Star Wars Kid" or some other unwilling participant of an uploaded video. Youtube does not check to make sure the subjects of videos signed releases and gave permission for their likenesses to be used (and of course they can't, as that would be the end of their business.) Now that they have deep pockets and are making a profit I would suspect sooner or later the next fat kid who's unfortunate enough to get caught on tape falling on his face (and thus seen by millions in a "viral video") is going to sue Google/YouTube for millions... And probably win.

    20. Re:Hmmmm by stunt_penguin · · Score: 1

      Facing trouble and succombing to it are two entirely different prospects; Google are standing up and fighting for their fair use of other people's material and will hopefully set precedent for cases in the future.

      --
      When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
    21. Re:Hmmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

      shutup cuban.

    22. Re:Hmmmm by unity100 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Google has outgrown any organization like RIAA or MPAA.

      Its on the leading edge of internet progress.

      Internet, is, 'people'.

      Noone can fight against people. Google owning youtube will be a catalyst factor in getting the dinasours realize that we are living in a new world, and pushing the whole WORLD's people for anything outdated is folly at best.

      This will remove one of the 2-3 factors hampering the 'new age' if you will.

    23. Re:Hmmmm by Watts+Martin · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Whether one believes it's "fair" or not, legally posting copyrighted material does not fall under the "fair use" act--even a snippet is of dubious legality in this instance (it's not being "quoted" for a review or illustrative purposes), and posting works in their entirety certainly doesn't qualify.

      Google is essentially counting on the same thing YouTube has been all along--a legal safe harbor provision. YouTube's business model (such as it is) doesn't rely on copyright infringement,* so as long as Google is diligent about removing infringing material they're likely safe. And what I've heard about this buyout suggests that their new copyright-holding partners like Universal plan to help them search.

      *Napster lost making the same argument, but YouTube certainly has much more user-created and sanctioned content than the original Napster did.

    24. Re:Hmmmm by alexj33 · · Score: 0

      Youtube is now owned by G$$gle. Now watch those lawsuits fly!

    25. Re:Hmmmm by bangzilla · · Score: 1

      Of course the content companies will go after Google. Going after YouTube as a private company with very little money is of small value. Going after Google with *lots* of cash is much more lucrative. I can visualize the lawers rubbing their hands in glee over this news. How long, I wonder, before the first suit is filed after the deal goes through.....?

      --
      Rich people are eccentric. Poor people are strange. Me, I'd be happy with odd.
    26. Re:Hmmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      They're currently target number one for several other big tech firms, and fighting on all fronts, and I'm sure Sun Tzu had something to say about the wisdom of that approach.

      No, that was Londo Mollari :P
      Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne of the kingdom of idiots would fight a war on twelve fronts.

    27. Re:Hmmmm by TheoMurpse · · Score: 5, Informative
      And what are they going to be sued under? I mean, the DMCA says that a copyright owner cannot sue until (1)they have submitted a takedown request to Google (formerly Youtube), and (2)Google fails to take the copyrighted material down. For information, read this (PDF), a secondary source of law about the DMCA, with analysis. In particular, read the section at the bottom of page 9 entitled Eligibility for Limitations Generally. To my understanding, Google qualifies as a "service provider" under this definition (the definition is in the section, so don't assume it is equivalent to "ISP"). There are 2 things Google has to accomplish: (1)adopt a policy of terminating the accounts of repeat infringers, and (2)not make it difficult for copyright owners to identify and protect their works. Thus, as long as Google (formerly Youtube) has a formal takedown policy upon notification by the copyright owner, they are compliant. And here's a ProTip: Youtube was compliant; they just did not have the financing to battle frivolous suits in court. Google, on the other hand, has very, very deep pockets to fight suits like this. Furthermore, Google seems to be fine under Limitation for Transitory Communications (page 10) as well.

      Even if you consider all I just posted to be weak defense, the kicker begins on page 11: Limitation for Information Residing on Systems or Networks at the Direction of Users. Google meets all three requirements:
      • Google must not have "requisite level knowledge of the infringing activity. Examining what this means (page 12), we see that, because there are so many files on Youtube, they cannot have this type of knowledge (unless, of course, during discovery, a corporate memo was found which cited a specific infringing video that, after the fact, was never removed), which must be knowledge of a specific infringing file, not that infringement is occurring in general.
      • If Google has the right and ability to control the infringing activity then (halt this boolean, we do not need to know the antecedent since it already evaluates to False: Google cannot monitor the millions of files placed on what was Youtube)
      • "Upon receiving proper notification of claimed infringement, [Google] must expeditiously take down or block access to the material" - Youtube did this, as evidenced by the many times Lazy Sunday was taken off Youtube at NBC's request (note that Youtube was never sued for this activity)
      Google also has an agent filed with the Copyright Office to receive infringement claims: here (PDF). As a sidenote, it's refreshing to see that a corporation has filed handwritten documents with the Copyright Office; kind of gives them character (or an air of sloppiness?).
    28. Re:Hmmmm by Snaller · · Score: 1

      Prediction the fourth: They will use some crappy format (like Flash or encrypted wmv) that i can only watch on a webpage and thusly I couldn't care less about it since i refuse to watch stuff on the computer.

      --
      If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
    29. Re:Hmmmm by Raenex · · Score: 1
      Actually, with Google's deep pockets, there is NO chance that the awards will ever be paid out.

      Tell that to the Blackberry people. You mention Microsoft. They've lost and paid plenty of lawsuits.

    30. Re:Hmmmm by bteeter · · Score: 2, Informative

      ... which means that Google has a LOT of money to hire lawyers and fight cases brought against them. I'd be surprised if Google ever paid a big award for Copyright infringement, even when its happening on Google Video and Youtube. All they would have to do is take it down when asked and there is no basis for suit.

      Google is a smart company if nothing else. I'm 100% sure they have this base covered.

      Take care, Brian
      --
      HoldEmToolShed.com - Poker Software, News and Tips

    31. Re:Hmmmm by Mr.+Underbridge · · Score: 1

      Can they be held liable since they did not directly control what users uploaded?

      Yep. Check out "contributory infringement." Doesn't mean they will, but the central index of content (a la Napster) doesn't help.

    32. Re:Hmmmm by RidiculousPie · · Score: 1
      They're currently target number one for several other big tech firms, and fighting on all fronts, and I'm sure Sun Tzu had something to say about the wisdom of that approach.

      The height of strategy is not to subdue the enemy in battle, but to subdue him without fighting at all.

      Google's major market is advertising & search. If they can distract other potential competitors in that market, then they are already winning.

      --
      ah, mod points ... now where is my crack?
    33. Re:Hmmmm by cptgrudge · · Score: 1

      Google owning youtube will be a catalyst factor in getting the dinasours realize that we are living in a new world, and pushing the whole WORLD's people for anything outdated is folly at best.

      Yeah, I take euphoria producing drugs too, though mine are prescribed. Quite a fantastic feeling, even if it sometimes makes one a bit reckless.

      --
      Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
    34. Re:Hmmmm by mysidia · · Score: 1

      That's why shareholders don't get sued when the company they own shares in does something illegal. Similarly, the owners of youtube were never at risk in the first place, only the corporation itself and that risk was transferred to google along with all the other assets of the youtube corporation.

      If Google buys Youtube, and maintains its existence as a separate organization, they should be no more liable than Google's shareholders are, because they in effect made Google the only shareholder of a 100% interest in Youtube.

    35. Re:Hmmmm by dodobh · · Score: 2, Funny

      Or Google buys out members of the *AA?

      --
      I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
    36. Re:Hmmmm by o2sd · · Score: 1

      The bubble will burst on this purchase. There's too much copyright infringement going on @ Youtube.

      Nonsense. It has been said before in other discussions, the RIAA and MPAA and every other Assholes Anonymous organisation are not the least bit concerned with their copyright material being on YouTube. Their concern is the non-copyrighted material. They don't want to collect royalties for their material, they want to shut down YouTube (and others) as both a distribution mechanism for entertainment and as an alternative to mainstream entertainment (which they control).

      Google buying YouTube is very good news, because Google is good at searching for stuff wiff dem newfangled kompooters, and this includes finding material on youtube that infringes copyright. This is a disaster for the Assholes Anonymous organisations because it means that their extortion racket is not going to work any more, as they need to prove that there is ongoing and deliberate copyright infringement to get YouTube shut down. This is going to be difficult if Google can find any remove infringing material faster than AA can find and document it. Google can argue that (A) They have no control on what is posted by users but (B) They have a comprehensive methodology of tracking down infringing material and removing it which they operate on an ongoing basis and therefore Google are acting "in good faith" to prevent copyright infringement.

      This purchase is good for YouTube, good for YouTube users (like myself) that use YouTube only for non-infringing videos (that's what Azureus is for) and good for people like Gary Brolsma or the Ask A Ninja guy and just about any other smartass with a handycam willing to do something stupid or otherwise mildly entertaining and share it with the rest of us for bragging rights.

      --
      - Nothing to see hear.
    37. Re:Hmmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Famous last words ...

    38. Re:Hmmmm by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm not disputing the US DMCA provisions here; I don't know enough US law to know what the situation is for sure. However, much of the world does not have such provision, and frankly, I'm not sure the US has a terribly credible position on this one, since they're effectively saying "go ahead and infringe until you're told not to, and then have no penalty as long as you stop when you're caught". There are a lot more copyright holders in the world than Big Media, and a lot of the special interest producers/distributors that YouTube/Google harms have a lot more to lose, since they don't make the huge profits Big Media does and their businesses could quite literally collapse under the pressure of illegal copying. They also lack the resources to monitor everyone's video site everywhere in the world constantly, and since infringing their copyright is illegal, I'm not sure why they should have to.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    39. Re:Hmmmm by ronanbear · · Score: 1
      Google has a LOT of money to lobby for changes in copyright law/interpretation of the DMCA etc. In the last few years it was a case of huge corporations which employ thousands of people losing out to tiny companies noone had ever heard of like Napster and Kazaa. There was noone strong enough to fight the fair use corner properly. ISPs, mp3 manufacturers etc. wanted just enough infringement that people would buy broadband but not enough to swamp the networks.

      For the most part the RIAA and MPAA have gotten whatever they want over the last few years from regulators. Google are sensible, music videos never made money directly. They only ever sold records. Youtube still does that. The record labels will be very happy to get income from youtube/free advertising and a one click way for people to download songs after watching the video.

      The other major source of copyright infringement on youtube (because clips are necessarily short) are often short sports highlights, moments from TV shows or trailers. The reason they are so popular is that there's no other way to see those highlights for many people. There's money to be made in sport highlights but the rights holders have multiyear billion dollar deals that don't really include a practical way to see that tackle everyone has been talking about in the game you missed.

      --
      the more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the pipe
    40. Re:Hmmmm by somersault · · Score: 1

      It's a lot more interesting kicking the ass of many than the ass of one. Well on deathmatch anyway. I'm sure a lot of Googlers like a good ol' deathmatch. Hmm.

      --
      which is totally what she said
    41. Re:Hmmmm by somersault · · Score: 1

      What do you mean 'force'? You think they're going to give up 1.6 millionzillion dollars by buying a company and then just let them die? Maybe for a few million, but for over a billion, I think they'd be wanting to do something more useful. If Google own YouTube then they're partially responsible anyway, so anything that affects YouTube also affects Google. Anyway they're not a big bunch of doo-doo headed meanies, they do no evil, remember?

      --
      which is totally what she said
    42. Re:Hmmmm by kjart · · Score: 1

      Google has outgrown any organization like RIAA or MPAA.

      Riiiiiight. Google, an advertising company (it may be "on the leading edge of internet progress" - wtf does that even mean? - but it's revenue is 99% ad based) has outgrown content creators. Now that you mention it, though, the RIAA and MPAA certainly dont represent any kind of advertising expenditure.

      ......

    43. Re:Hmmmm by Apocalypse111 · · Score: 1

      Never happen - violates the "Do no evil" rule, as they'd then become part of the evil, thus evil by association, and would all have to quit.

      --
      There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
    44. Re:Hmmmm by 14CharUsername · · Score: 1

      I think you hit the nail on the head. Advertisers will pay much more per ad if they know that only people in their target demographic are watching. A banner or even a text ad at the top or bottom of the screen is worth much more than a 30 second spot that the majority of the audience isn't interested in.

    45. Re:Hmmmm by evilviper · · Score: 1
      They also lack the resources to monitor everyone's video site everywhere in the world constantly, and since infringing their copyright is illegal, I'm not sure why they should have to.

      Because there's nothing magic about illegally copied videos, which make it obvious (to a 3rd party) they shouldn't be there... They don't start flashing "ILLEGAL!!!" when you watch them on YouTube or Google Video.

      Only the copyright holder can tell that they own the video, and that they didn't give anyone permission to share it. Google/YouTube has no magic insight into the legal status of anonymously uploaded videos.
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    46. Re:Hmmmm by TheoMurpse · · Score: 1
      I'm not sure the US has a terribly credible position on this one, since they're effectively saying "go ahead and infringe until you're told not to, and then have no penalty as long as you stop when you're caught".
      Google isn't the one infringing under the DMCA, and if it was, then Geocities, MySpace, Yahoo!, every university, Slashdot, Digg, every ISP, every owner of phone lines or cable or fiber, etc. would be infringers because of their users' posts. This would create more of a litigious atmosphere in the university, and would kill internet commerce. As the US has a policy of not killing internet commerce (save the recent internet gambling legislation), it would be idiotic to allow copyright infringement suits to be taken against Google and the like under the DMCA.

      It sounds more like you are a content producer who wants Google to monitor every video as it's posted to YouTube. I think this would kill YouTube, as it would kill iTunes (which would have to monitor each podcast it allows you to subscribe to), MySpace, Blogger, etc. Do you think that is an amenable solution, to basically kill the internet to protect a few people? I mean, many artists (Barenaked Ladies -- major commercial, MC Lars -- indie, etc.) don't care about their music being distributed, so obviously not every content producer (I really hate using that phrase, since every human produces so much copyrighted content) feels the way you do.
    47. Re:Hmmmm by unity100 · · Score: 1

      outgrown "in power and influence" as one can understand from the context.

    48. Re:Hmmmm by dodobh · · Score: 1

      They would obviously start by putting up the marketing dweebs and lawyers against the wall.

      --
      I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
    49. Re:Hmmmm by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      Only the copyright holder can tell that they own the video, and that they didn't give anyone permission to share it. Google/YouTube has no magic insight into the legal status of anonymously uploaded videos.

      And since when was ignorance a defence in law?

      In any case, one clue is in the way a lot of the special interest videos have even included the title sequence, complete with copyright statement!

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    50. Re:Hmmmm by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      I'm not personally a content provider per se, though it's true that I do know some people who have been screwed personally in this way.

      I also realise the dilemma here; of course there is merit in the "common carrier" approach. However, there comes a point beyond which service providers cannot credibly rely on a claim to such status as a defence. I think when probably half of the content crossing your system is illegal, picking things off one-by-one is not really in the interests of either moral justice or upholding the spirit of the law.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    51. Re:Hmmmm by evilviper · · Score: 1
      And since when was ignorance a defence in law?

      It isn't absolute, but it has ALWAYS been a defense. Common Carrier status, and the DMCA, just make it explicit in this case.

      There are many other situations where ignorance puts you in a much better position.
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  7. WHOa by JRWR · · Score: 0

    Well where did this come from? i would of never of thought of Google buying YouTube!

    1. Re:WHOa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      HAVE! It's HAVE, fucktard. How is it possible that you make THREE mistakes with TWO words??

    2. Re:WHOa by linguizic · · Score: -1, Flamebait

      Languages change dickhead! Get over it! If you don't like it go ahead and kill yourself because nothing's going to change that! How do you think Spanish, French, Portugese, Romanian, Italian, and Catalan all came into existence? By people making "mistakes" in Latin. I'm so sick of assholes like you jumping down people's throats about shit like this. Did his "mistakes" keep you from understanding what was said? Did his "mistakes" hurt you? But you decided to be a dickhead to him anyway, over what? Go eat shit you grammar nazi.

      --
      Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
    3. Re:WHOa by Snaller · · Score: 1

      Languages change dickhead

      Yes, but he was an uneducated idiot - dickhead.

      --
      If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
    4. Re:WHOa by R2.0 · · Score: 1

      Bless you - I haven't laughed that hard at a /. post in years.

      Especially when I pictured you yelling it at the monitor screen (admit it - we know you did)

      --
      "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
    5. Re:WHOa by R2.0 · · Score: 1

      I'm picturing Daffy Duck in "Duck Amok".

      --
      "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
    6. Re:WHOa by koreth · · Score: 2, Informative
      Sometimes popular deviations from the norm cause languages to evolve. And sometimes an error is just an error.

      The languages you name are not a result of "'mistakes' in Latin." What we know as Spanish, for example, is certainly heavily influenced by Latin. But it is not a simple derivative of Latin that appeared because people couldn't remember their declensions. Rather, Latin mixed with existing indigenous languages (which were in turn based on mixes of other, earlier languages such as Celtic). Then there was the small matter of Arabic-speaking Moors ruling much of Spain for a time, leaving behind an Arabic influence that persisted even after the speakers of the more Latin-influenced language drove the Moors out.

      The histories of modern languages are actually rather interesting reading. They are more complex than you might think.

      I think foreign occupations and fluid borders have contributed vastly more lasting change to languages over time than oft-repeated mistakes have, though you can certainly point to plenty of examples of the latter. For example, using "they" as a gender-neutral pronoun in English is becoming more and more accepted over time. A hundred years from now it may well be universally considered completely correct in formal written English. On the other hand, "their" and "they're" and "there" are still not interchangeable despite the best mistake-making efforts of generations of students.

      Finally, if you really believe that poorly-spelled, ungrammatical writing is just fine, start learning a foreign language. Preferably one that's very distant from your native language. Then visit that language's equivalent of Slashdot and I guarantee you will deeply appreciate the people who take the time to proofread their messages. Poor grammar and spelling are not much of a problem for native speakers, but they can be huge obstacles to understanding for non-native speakers.

  8. So ungoogle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is so ungoogle. Google builds, not buys. Google indexes, not serves. Google already had a video service.

    Google is jumping the shark.

    1. Re:So ungoogle by cp.tar · · Score: 3, Informative

      If I understood the situation correctly, Google bought YouTube - among other things - to prevent others from buying it and gaining (more) advantage in the field.

      Furthermore, it is not the first product they've bought either.

      --
      Ignore this signature. By order.
    2. Re:So ungoogle by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 2, Informative

      Google isn't afraid of buying things, so I don't know what you are talking about.

      Google bought a satellite mapping company, an online spreadsheet program, an online word processing program, and a photo management program. It looks like they bought Blogger too. They might have bought SketchUp. The weird thing is that Google didn't already have a service or program for most of the other purchases, this time they already had their Video service but bought YouTube anyway. I think that's a more clear way of just buying their way into the market segment leader.

    3. Re:So ungoogle by IntergalacticWalrus · · Score: 1

      Google builds, not buys.

      So I take it you're one of those people who think Google made Google Earth (formely Keyhole) and Picasa from scratch?

    4. Re:So ungoogle by nate+nice · · Score: 1

      "Jumping The Shark" already? I could care less either way but you have to believe that Google has some use for them we're not thinking of yet, but then who knows. Maybe they're just in consume mode at this point and spreading themselves...

      Regardless, they got totally ripped off and I'm sure this isn't the last in their path for world monopoli.....I mean domination.

      It does seem out of step for them to do this, however.

      1.65 bil.....man, that's a lot of scratch for a Website that's a money pit in terms of (storage + bandwidth)/ad revenue.

      --
      "If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer ..."
    5. Re:So ungoogle by infestedsenses · · Score: 1
      This is so ungoogle. Google builds, not buys.

      Where have you been the last years? ;)

      And they've bought plenty more than that, and continue to do so.

    6. Re:So ungoogle by thelost · · Score: 1

      That's a slightly romantic interpretation of Google. They're a clever company who knows which side their bread is buttered on, they have to move with the times. As is said by others buying youtube is in part a move to keep it out of the greasy mitts of the competition.

      Also google has a whole host of web acquisitions in its pocket like Writely and Picasa.

      It's kind of understandable that people still see google as an indexing service, not a content service, but this is changing.

      The only thing I am not looking forward to is the great youtube clear up of '06. All the content that we have come to know and love (like my quick n' easy south park episodes) will vanish.

      --
      Promote Charity on Myspace, Show Your Colours!
    7. Re:So ungoogle by teh_chrizzle · · Score: 1

      they bought blogger, and before they did, the blogger website was a shining monument to instability.

      --
      sarcasm:
      -noun
      1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
    8. Re:So ungoogle by Tony+Hoyle · · Score: 1

      Heck, they pretty much started by buying dejanews...

    9. Re:So ungoogle by nate+nice · · Score: 1

      They didn't buy this site, they got HOSED on it!

      They bought a money pit because their stock went up 2% on news they might buy it. After buying it they're going to go up another 4% or so thus paying for itself. Since 1.65 billion is worth 1.5% of the company, gaining 5% or so means they just made 3.5%. This is short term though.

      In the end I think they get hosed but whatever.

      --
      "If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer ..."
    10. Re:So ungoogle by westlake · · Score: 1
      Google is jumping the shark.

      To put it more plainly, YouTube is to Google what AOL is to Timw-Warner.

    11. Re:So ungoogle by hotdiggitydawg · · Score: 1

      Heh... JD "Iliad" Frazer, eat yer hat...

    12. Re:So ungoogle by Tarlus · · Score: 1

      This has been going on for a while, though.
      Google Maps? All they did with that was use existing map data and stick it in their own database, and slap a nifty little AJAX front end on it.
      Google Earth? All they did was buy out the Keyhole Earth Viewer technology, which had been existent for a long time. They just took that and slapped 3D terrain onto it, and tied it into a web community.
      So with YouTube, I'm sure they'll take it and so something smart and/or innovative with it to make it even better than it already is, thus giving it a unique Google flair. Google isn't stupid enough to spend that much money just to let it piledrive them into the ground from lawsuits, so I'd put more faith into what ideas they have in store.

      --
      /* No Comment */
    13. Re:So ungoogle by yppiz · · Score: 1
      parent post: This is so ungoogle. Google builds, not buys.


      Actually, I can think of three services Google bought rather than built: Blogger, Google Earth, and Sketchup.


      --Pat

    14. Re:So ungoogle by ndansmith · · Score: 0, Redundant

      This is so ungoogle. Google builds, not buys.

        No, Google buys too.

    15. Re:So ungoogle by a55clown · · Score: 1

      and you make it sound so simple. geez, why didn't i think of that?

    16. Re:So ungoogle by smclean · · Score: 1

      For the record, Keyhole's software already had 3d terrain before Google purchased it.

      --

      "'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."

    17. Re:So ungoogle by Cheapy · · Score: 1

      Google is pulling a Microsoft: buying out a competitor.

      --
      Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
    18. Re:So ungoogle by Firehed · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Google's worth about a hundred billion dollars? It's impossible to nail that figure and not be evil.

      --
      How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
    19. Re:So ungoogle by gkhan1 · · Score: 1

      While I agree with most of what you say. but did google really buy the spreadsheet program? I'm pretty sure they developed that in-house.

    20. Re:So ungoogle by stunt_penguin · · Score: 1

      My sentiment on their acquisitions is that they may sometimes buy and not develop, but they have exceptional taste in purchases ^^

      --
      When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
    21. Re:So ungoogle by Merusdraconis · · Score: 1

      "Google's worth about a hundred billion dollars? It's impossible to nail that figure and not be evil."

      Not any more, they just bought YouTube and are about to be sued out of existence.

    22. Re:So ungoogle by Jesterboy · · Score: 1

      Why does everybody think Google wants YouTube for tech when it's obvious they want it for traffic?

      YouTube is up there in traffic rankings, which must be what they're after. What does YouTube have that Google Video doesn't? Gobs of unique IP hits, ergo buyout.

    23. Re:So ungoogle by catprog · · Score: 1

      They alreasy have the calander thing (not sure anout the map thing)

      --
      My Transformation Website
      Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
      Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
    24. Re:So ungoogle by Breakfast+Pants · · Score: 1

      Surely you complicate the matter: YouTube is to Google what AOL is to Google (you remember that AOL stock purchase right?).

      --

      --

      WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
    25. Re:So ungoogle by GTMoogle · · Score: 1

      They had map integration a long time ago. I noticed several e-mails where there was a link on the right side that said "Map this address" or the like. I guess they took it out because it mismatched too often?

    26. Re:So ungoogle by Firehed · · Score: 1

      Insightful/Interesting... okay, I was aiming for Funny with a Dr. Evil reference, but that works too.

      --
      How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
    27. Re:So ungoogle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The word is "Googley" -- "So ungoogley"

    28. Re:So ungoogle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Really? AdSense was an acquisition of Applied Semantics. And that's hardly a new technology.

    29. Re:So ungoogle by suv4x4 · · Score: 1

      This is so ungoogle. Google builds, not buys. Google indexes, not serves. Google already had a video service.

      Google is jumping the shark.


      You're confusing the image of Google with what Google is doing.

      Picassa, Writely, Google Earth, YouTube, Google Statistics, Google Video Player and a good number of algorithms and technologies built into their search engine: it's all purchased companies (or open source software in the case of Google Video Player).

      Every big company ends up buying smaller companies that have what the big company needs. This is the main way a big company grows anyway.

      I've told you all few years ago that Google will grow and start losing their geeky "we make stuff" non-commercial image and turn into yet another corporation, just like it happened with Yahoo. We're on the verge of that, or even maybe past that.

      We gotta get over it: Google is huge, and two guys alone can't control all Google is anymore, let alone argue with their shareholders.

    30. Re:So ungoogle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      let alone argue with their shareholders.

      That's the beauty of it: They don't have to! Their shareholders have zero power.

  9. Ill Go Ahead and Say it by moore.dustin · · Score: 4, Funny

    The Bubble is back! Bubble 2.0, but a bubble nonetheless.

    1. Re:Ill Go Ahead and Say it by thefirelane · · Score: 4, Funny

      no way, this bubble is way different. This time, instead of being unprofitable while hoping to strike it rich with any IPO, companies are unprofitable and hope to be bought out by Google.

      Everyone learned from the last time, obviously the stock market is untrustworthy.

    2. Re:Ill Go Ahead and Say it by Gadgetfreak · · Score: 1

      Yep, they all learned real good... except those people who accept an all-stock buyout.

      --
      "No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
    3. Re:Ill Go Ahead and Say it by rakerman · · Score: 1

      The Internet is a series of bubbles.

    4. Re:Ill Go Ahead and Say it by Devar · · Score: 1

      With Google leading the way in Bubble 2.0, it's more of a Gooble. Or a Gubble...

      --
      It's a Bagel.
  10. All i ask for is: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    google's search engine replacing youtube's

    1. Re:All i ask for is: by D+H+NG · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Surprisingly, I found Google Video's search capablities lacking compared to YouTube's. Google Video searches exactly what you're looking for, with no variations. YouTube is a little bit smarter, it can perform keyword branching, which surprisingly works very well for video searches. (When I'm searching for boobies, I don't care if it's one or many boobies they're showing.)

    2. Re:All i ask for is: by hotdiggitydawg · · Score: 5, Funny
      When I'm searching for boobies, I don't care if it's one or many boobies they're showing.
      Well given that they typically travel in pairs, the type of video where there's only one may perhaps be a little more... surgical... than intended.
    3. Re:All i ask for is: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hah! he said boobies!!!

    4. Re:All i ask for is: by D+H+NG · · Score: 2, Funny

      I was actually searching for these.

  11. A leaf out of Microsofts book by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    just buy the competition

  12. If they're looking to court respectability.. by Channard · · Score: 1

    .. and legitimacy for YouTube, I guess the first major change will be the removal of all copyrighted video and subsequent policing of the site. At the time of writing, there's a hell of a lot of copyrighted shows on there. Granted, you can't easily download them, but it's still legally dodgy at best and downright illegal at worst.

    1. Re:If they're looking to court respectability.. by thegux · · Score: 1

      It is quite easy to download videos from YouTube actually, here. They're in FLV though, so it's not that easy to play, but the new VLC plays FLVs fine as far as I know.

    2. Re:If they're looking to court respectability.. by Mitchell+Mebane · · Score: 1

      Yeah, it will be interesting to see what stance Google takes on infringing content... I don't think it's possible to clean up YouTube without killing a large portion of its appeal.

      --

      The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
      --Aristotle
    3. Re:If they're looking to court respectability.. by ThisNukes4u · · Score: 1

      Mplayer (and anything that can use ffmpeg, such as xine and gstreamer) can play FLV's fine, and have been able to for awhile now.

      --
      thisnukes4u.net
    4. Re:If they're looking to court respectability.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nonsense. 10 times out of 10 I go to YouTube to watch TV programs. Licensing is the way to go...

  13. At that rate, does google want a game company? by cliffski · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hey google, Thats 24 million dollars each isn't it? I'm a one man company, but you can buy my company (www.positech.co.uk) for just $15 million.
    Give me a call, or just drop me an email guys. That figure is negotiable too.

    --
    DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
    1. Re:At that rate, does google want a game company? by joe_bruin · · Score: 1

      You fool, that's not how you get bought out by Google. What you have to do is write up an analysis of why they should buy you, put it in an email titled "Google Should Buy My Company" and mail it to yourself on your Gmail account. They'll be sure to read it, and if they're interested, they'll contact you via Google-talk.

    2. Re:At that rate, does google want a game company? by mgblst · · Score: 1

      Well, produce something useful, and you might get bought out. It wouldn't be the first example of a company grooming iteself to be bought out. So start intergrating some current technology with the internet, and you too could be a multi-billionare.

  14. My Question is why? by fullphaser · · Score: 1

    One thing about this that gets me is why. I mean in principle google video and youtube are a bit different, enough so that a fusion of the two will force one company principal over another, google has a very subsidiary view to the RIAA, and the other orginizations out there, Youtube you still see that subsidiary feel, but not nearly as much. I think that we are either going to see a loss of the youtube spirit simply because of the google standards, I mean I go to youtube to catch episodes of Star Trek (if you search well) google, I will never find them because of their "alliance" with paramount on the matter.

    --
    Did someone say cake?
    1. Re:My Question is why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      The why is simple, youtube has the audience and google needs that audience. The next question is then 'why does google need a larger video audience'. The answer to that question is google is about to make a play on video ads (think adwords for video) and needs the majority of the internet video audience to claim the crown and solidify their dominance. Theres alot of money at stake in creating centralized video ad networks on an auction style model, and google is trying to bolster their legitimacy when they enter that race.

    2. Re:My Question is why? by fullphaser · · Score: 1

      Yes but google and Youtube's video audiance are fundementally different. By taking out one of Youtubes key factors (the fact you can find copyrighted movies, etc there) makes its audiance, if google takes over they will have to drop that, and then they loose their audiance and hence the reason for buying.

      --
      Did someone say cake?
    3. Re:My Question is why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I dont agree with you that youtubes audience will dissolve immediately after the transition into googles hands. The site will certainly lose its flavor but as long as google + youtube retain the largest slice of the internet video pie, thats all google needs to launch a successful ad network.

  15. Integration with Google Video? by mysqlrocks · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Even though they say "YouTube will retain its distinct brand identity" I wonder how much integration they will eventually do with Google Video. Will YouTube videos be search-able on Google Video, for example? Google is usually good at not integrating just for the sake of integrating. For example, Google Analytics still uses a Flash based map instead of the Google Maps API.

    1. Re:Integration with Google Video? by garcia · · Score: 1

      Google is usually good at not integrating just for the sake of integrating. For example, Google Analytics still uses a Flash based map instead of the Google Maps API.

      IMHO that was an example of why Google *should* integrate. Google Analytics' flash map absolutely blows. It's basically worthless unless you are looking at the world overview. The second you want to see anything close up it's shit and you can't navigate it very well.

      I'd give anything for them to make that section of Analytics more useful as IMHO that part of the tool is potentially the most interesting.

    2. Re:Integration with Google Video? by mysqlrocks · · Score: 2, Insightful
      IMHO that was an example of why Google *should* integrate.

      I wasn't necessarily saying that they should or shouldn't have used the Google Maps API, just giving an example of where, from a strictly technological point of view, it would have made sense to integrate but they chose not to integrate for whatever reason. I'm guessing that all of the Urchin users that were switched over to Google Analytics have an expectation as to how that feature works and Google wanted to be cautious about changing a feature out from under an existing user base.

  16. Has to be said by TheBiGW · · Score: 2, Funny
    Yoooooooooooooutube

    :)

    --
    Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for an hour. Set him on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
    1. Re:Has to be said by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      GooTube?

    2. Re:Has to be said by TeknoHog · · Score: 1

      Tuuuuuuble

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  17. Good buy for Google by sbrown123 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I know some people won't get why they did this, or how Google will make money from YouTube. I will explain:

    First, Google makes money through advertisement. Currently simple text banner ads. But a quick look at other sites will show you a growing interest in video ads. YouTube has a lot of visitors, and if Google plays this correctly they can make more advertisement dollars.

    Secondly, YouTube signed some nice contracts with the likes of CBS and two music labels.

    1. Re:Good buy for Google by sporkmonger · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I expect it was the contracts more than anything that justified the price. The original purpose though, was almost certainly to consolidate the two biggest video players into one. That said, the only reason this happened at all was because it was an all-stock deal. Google's stock was at around $430 today, which a lot of people seem to think is still over-valued, especially by people within Google. If the internal Google people think their own stock is over-valued, it makes sense for them to try to get the most out of it while it's still high.

    2. Re:Good buy for Google by cybermage · · Score: 1
      Currently simple text banner ads. But a quick look at other sites will show you a growing interest in video ads. YouTube has a lot of visitors, and if Google plays this correctly they can make more advertisement dollars.

      If you're suggesting that they could insert ads infront of the video stream, I think that that is a dangerous Pandora's Box that Google almost definitely doesn't want to open for a few of reasons:

      1. It is one thing to avoid matching ads to competitor's content (e.g., not putting Ford ads on GM's website) when you're talking about text. It's a whole lot harded with video
      2. Much of the content of YouTube violates copyright. Inserting ads infront of copy-infringing material could make them even more culpable than they would be just owning the site.
      3. Ads will create a market from an ad-free service to be a disruptive technology and come up from under and destroy YouTube

      --
      under-reported news with commentary
    3. Re:Good buy for Google by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      Third, Google has a lot of dark fiber just waiting to be used. More than anyone else, Google has the resources to use YouTube to its full potential. Remember today's deal was a stock swap. It's not as if Google paid cash.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    4. Re:Good buy for Google by johansalk · · Score: 1

      Why wouldn't Google make money from YouTube? Youtube had two main costs that might've put off other buyers; storage and bandwidth for all those videos. Both of those are non issues for Google considering their tremendous computing infrastructe that they had so much of they didn't quite know what to do with. Now they'll just serve ads to all those kids. It's a much better deal than that billion they gave to myspace just for the ads.

    5. Re:Good buy for Google by jez9999 · · Score: 1

      a quick look at other sites will show you a growing interest in video ads. YouTube has a lot of visitors, and if Google plays this correctly they can make more advertisement dollars.

      Except that I've heard they've ruled out using video ads... or was that only YouTube (before the Google takeover)? this article certainly seems to say that they've ruled out video ads; "YouTube, by contrast, has ruled out using traditional ads that precede or follow a video. A Viacom executive said the company is open to other ways of placing advertising with its partners and is using the Google deal to test different methods."

      I did find this rather curious as video ads would probably be accepted by users (especially if there were a 'skip ad' button), and make way more money than text ads that most people will probably ignore. In addition, freeloaders couldn't use ad-blockers to block these video ads (apologies to AdBlock users, but I politely disagree with your freeloader stance).

    6. Re:Good buy for Google by aeryn_sunn · · Score: 1

      Secondly, YouTube signed some nice contracts with the likes of CBS and two music labels.

      I have seen this reference to "contracts" between youtube and others in a number of post as if these contracts solve all of the fundamental problems with YouTube and potential copyright infringement liability and weak revenue potential....however, not a person posting knows exactly what these contracts discuss or even if they relieve Youtube of any copyright liability from those specific companies. If anything, Youtube is hyping these contracts... first, in negoiations, who had the stronger bargaining position? more than likely, not Youtube, second, from what I read, the contracts have more to do with potential revenue sharing from future videos from those media companies and not anything that relieves Youtube of future copyright liability... the coporate powers that be would not irresponsibility throw out the baby with the bath water in these contracts and not give Youtube a "free pass" so to speak on the legal issues and said media companies' copyrights...

      the whole point being, contracts, schmontracts, no matter who owns Youtube, obviously now that being Google, the media companies will still pursue any copyright violations vigorously against Google/Youtube if those companies start to feel that copyright violations are threatening and diluting their products.

      On another note, some posters argue that Google/YouTube is protected by the Safe harbor provisions of the DMCA, however, no court has ruled as such and the issue is not that simple....don't forget, the whole premise of Youtube is to share videos...which sounds eerily a lot like Napster, Grokster, et al... sure, Google/YouTube has a lot of non-infringing content, but that is just one factor to consider....

  18. And how much more... by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 1

    And how much more to settle all the copyright infringment claims? Google's problem here is that they have deep pockets. Makes them much more of a target.

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
    1. Re:And how much more... by truthsearch · · Score: 1

      Those deep pokets also make them a great partner for the copyright holders. Google definitely planned a profitable deal for the media moguls before purchasing YouTube. There will definitely be some mutually beneficial deals announced in the near future.

    2. Re:And how much more... by 91degrees · · Score: 1

      Google's problem here is that they have deep pockets. Makes them much more of a target

      Possibly too deep for the cartels. They can defend themselves. Even if they lose, the record industry is going to have to pay a lot to get a phyrric victory.

    3. Re:And how much more... by John+Hasler · · Score: 1

      You might want to read the DMCA.

      --
      Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
  19. Worth it? by smilingman · · Score: 1

    So what is Google really buying, aside from a brand name? Google Video loaded faster and had a cleaner interface. Unless they know something huge that we don't, I think they just paid 1.65 billion for a shiny icon and a library of teenage angst and people getting kicked in the balls.

    1. Re:Worth it? by loconet · · Score: 1

      You underestimate the business potential of having "a library of teenagers" at your disposal. If not ask MySpace, MTV, McDonald's, etc.

      --
      [alk]
    2. Re:Worth it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But YouTube has the community and the hits! I think it's like the old story of Edison cylinders vs. Berliner discs: the former had way better sound quality, but the latter was more practical and had more titles, so it became the standard, especially after Victor signed Enrico Caruso, so Victrolas became the preferred brand for reproduction devices. Cylinders were extinct by the 1920s.

    3. Re:Worth it? by nwbvt · · Score: 1

      Didn't I just see an article the other day arguing that teenagers steal music because they don't have credit cards which they can use to buy music online. Now I think that is a bit of an over-simplification, but teenagers really aren't the best market to court, especially if you are selling products online (which generally requires access to a credit card).

      --
      Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
    4. Re:Worth it? by loconet · · Score: 1

      Ever heard of WOW? The buying power of teenagers (through their parents and other means) offline and online is something that many are seeing.

      --
      [alk]
    5. Re:Worth it? by AmberBlackCat · · Score: 1

      If YouTube had the content and popularity of Google Video, it would be loading fast too.

    6. Re:Worth it? by nwbvt · · Score: 1

      If you are selling advertising, you need to be selling to a group that buys more than one product. Yes, there are a few things that are very popular with teenagers, but that is not the same as them being a great market for advertising.

      --
      Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
    7. Re:Worth it? by loconet · · Score: 1

      Because a place like MTV doesn't sell advertisement? No matter how you look at it, teenagers have the buying power online and off-line and they are the easiest consumers to milk if you are riding the right wave.

      --
      [alk]
    8. Re:Worth it? by nwbvt · · Score: 1

      MTV advertises in a completely different way than Google. A product that is sold via an MTV advertisement is intended to be sold in a store where a teenager can spend cash. Products sold via Google ads are generally sold over the net, which is almost always sold via credit card (which kids in high school and earlier usually don't have access to). Even if that advertisement convinces the kid to buy it later in a brick and mortar store, Google (with their new anti-click fraud changes) won't get paid.

      I'm not saying that there is no potential for revenue with this demographic, just that it is hardly worth the high price Google is apperantly willing to spend on it.

      --
      Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
  20. Why? by Trashhalo · · Score: 1

    Why would google want to do this? They just gave anyone who feels their work has been infringed (say by people using their songs in the background of videos) very deep pockets to pick. Any bets till the first lawsuit is filed? I am not a lawyer this is not legal advice infact I think this world would be better if fair use was extended greatly.

    --
    Dooom
  21. GooTube. by Honest+Olaf · · Score: 1

    Let the lawsuits begin.

    1. Re:GooTube. by FatRatBastard · · Score: 1

      I think the champange you heard popping is from the executives and lawyers representing Microsoft, Yahoo and the major content providers. I hate to say it, but I think Mark Cuban hit the nail on the head regarding YouTube's exposure to a lawsuit. And, in the case of Yahoo and Microsoft, if you can't beat them, sue the living shit out of them (or, more accuratly, do some "a deal you can't refuse" deals with content providers and have them sue the pants off of Google).

    2. Re:GooTube. by Honest+Olaf · · Score: 1

      The more champagne they drink, the larger the settlement from Google.

      Oh, wrong /. article.

  22. Great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Here's hoping they cut down on the junk videos and make it easier to find the latest fansub of Naruto.

  23. There goes 50% of Youtube content by GillBates0 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    This IMHO probably spells doom for a large percentage of content on YouTube. I for one, used to find it useful to catch up with some good scenes from say, the newest episode of SouthPark without having to wait for a rerun.

    True, Warner has embraced it's content for ad revenue, but I'm sure Youtube was treading on a thin edge, and would've had their a55es sued sooner or later.

    This will just expedite the inevitable, and I expect Google to quickly unpublish most (C) content to save their a55es. That'll probably reduce it to what Google Videos is right now, fun, but with very limited content.

    Goodbye, Youtube, it was a good run while it lasted.

    Deep Pockets (TM) invite lawsuits ~GillBates (2006)

    --
    An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
    1. Re:There goes 50% of Youtube content by joe+155 · · Score: 1

      do you not think that this might lead to whole episodes online via ad supported methods? I kinda hope that it does... still, I'm also hoping that they will let the site work without flash, for all us Linux users... or at least include a download like you get with google video.

      I still feel, though, that deep pockets invite better deals

      --
      *''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
    2. Re:There goes 50% of Youtube content by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      the newest episode of SouthPark without having to wait for a rerun.

      You do realize that South Park episodes are available in numerous places, and there are no copyright issues since the creators have explicitly permitted such uses, right?

    3. Re:There goes 50% of Youtube content by Trogre · · Score: 1

      Better download what you can while there's still content, then.

      --
      "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
  24. One investor's analysis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    SELL!

  25. Explain to me... by Nafai7 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I keep seeing all these comments about "copyright violations" on youtube... is a 5 minute daily show clip a copyright violation? Is there such a thing as fair use? Does youtube (now google) have some sort of common carrier for video defense they could claim?

    I'd like to see some serious commentary on this, and not just the assumption that youtube voilates copyright. I spend probably and hour a week watching stuff on youtube, and I'm sure over 95% of what I see does NOT violate any copyrights.

    1. Re:Explain to me... by TrekCycling · · Score: 1

      This is what I'd like to know as well. I'm more than happy to pay a few bones to see an old episode of a television show. But part of what has made YouTube so phenominally successful is you could go check out that really good segment of Olberman or Colbert Report that you missed last week, but everyone is talking about. Google could very well kill YouTube and gain nothing in return of value.

    2. Re:Explain to me... by 1point618 · · Score: 5, Informative

      IANAL, but I'm taking Computers and the Law, a course at my university about these matters.

      The length of a clip is not the only thing that matters in claiming fair use: also important is the importance of the clip in regard to the entire work, whether the original work is more factual or more creative, and what effect the use of the clip will have on the saleability of the work as a whole. It actually cannot be known whether using a copyrighted material falls under fair use until one is sued over that material and goes to court for it, as fair use is up to a court to decide.

      Also, even if the clips' being posted on YouTube violates copyright law, YouTube likely isn't liable for first-party violation, as they did not make the copies themselves, and they might not be liable for 2nd or 3rd party copyright violation if they can prove that they did not market YouTube as a place for copyrighted works to be posted by those who do not hold the copyright, and if they can show that they took appropriate measures to remove materials in violation of copyright.

      However, it is best to assume that any material you see on YouTube that was not posted by the author IS in violation of copyright, as there have been no rulings in this regard, and unless an author specifically gives up his copyright or publishes the works under an open license (which still lets him retain copyright, but lets others use and distribute the work as well), then he has the right to sue for infringement, and YouTube will at very least be required to take the work down if they cannot prove fair use or de minimus (least possible to make a point) use of the materials, or that the work was in the public domain.

      So, how are you so sure that the content does not violate the authors' copyrights?

    3. Re:Explain to me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      People actually watch Olbermann??

    4. Re:Explain to me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      is a 5 minute daily show clip a copyright violation? Is there such a thing as fair use?

      On its own, almost certainly. Fair use only applies to using a copyrighted work for "purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research" (direct quote from US copyright law). It's hard to argue that a five-minute clip of The Daily Show with no extra commentary etc. (and no, I don't think the subsequently-added user comments count) is fair use. In addition, there's the issue of the "substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole" (that is, how much of the original work is used). An example from the Wikipedia article: "In 1985, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a news article's quotation of approximately 300 words from former President Gerald Ford's 200,000 word memoir was sufficient to constitute an infringement of the exclusive publication right in the work. (Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises, 105 S.Ct. 2218 (1985)." Therefore, it seems likely that a five-minute clip of a half-hour edition of The Daily Show (which would be over a fifth of the show when commerical breaks are subtracted) is infringement.

    5. Re:Explain to me... by EggyToast · · Score: 1

      Yes, a 5 minute clip on a site supported by advertising is a copyright violation and is not a candidate for fair use. Why? Because a clip would be long enough to easily identify the source, it's not being used for education or review, and it gives the copyright holders less value for the material they own -- why wait for the rerun (where they receive ad dollars) or DVD if you can just watch the clip you like on Youtube?

      I'm not a copyright apologist, far from it, and I personally think that entertainment companies should adapt to how users want to use their media. After all, they wouldn't exist if it wasn't for fans. But that's how the law lays currently.

    6. Re:Explain to me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Indeed - his ratings are shooting up non-stop. Last I saw they were up 70%. His viewers love and trust him so he gets amazing word-of-mouth, combine with the youtube clips and you have transformed a low rated cable news guy with a tiny marketing budget and enemies at the Exec level who want to push him out into the fastest growing ratings in TV news and an amazing amount of buzz. Olberman's rise is an excellent example of why video on the internet excites certain investors.

    7. Re:Explain to me... by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'd like to see some serious commentary on this, and not just the assumption that youtube voilates copyright. I spend probably and hour a week watching stuff on youtube, and I'm sure over 95% of what I see does NOT violate any copyrights.

      Whereas at least half of the stuff I've seen on YouTube and the like blatantly violates copyright (for example, because it's a complete copy of a special interest DVD), and a lot more is infringing on technicalities (for example, because it's video from a dance competition, but all the music in the background isn't licensed for redistribution).

      Pretending that "fair use" is some sort of silver bullet in copyrightland is just wishful thinking. YouTube's entire business model revolves around people coming to see their content, and a great deal of their most popular content is clearly infringing. It's a matter of time before (a) they take draconian steps to remove it all (and dramatically slip down the list of popular web sites), or (b) they get seriously spanked in court.

      And yes, reproducing a complete five-minute segment from a TV show "just because" is clearly a copyright violation. It's the difference between using a 30 second excerpt from each of The Daily Show and CNN to illustrate a write-up of the recent "Daily Show news is as good as the news channels" discussion, and copying a whole segment from either source because you found it informative and wanted to share it.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    8. Re:Explain to me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I keep seeing all these comments about "copyright violations" on youtube... is a 5 minute daily show clip a copyright violation?

      Haven't ever actually used Youtube, have you?

      I don't mean, did you see a funny clip on somebody's blog and click play. I mean using Youtube. I mean using youtube to watch full tv shows and movies, cut up into three to ten five minute clips, strung end to end. I don't know if a 5 minute daily show clip is a copyright violation. Considering most of those 5 minute daily show clips wind up being available on comedycentral.com anyway, it's probably not a copyright violation. But when, y'know, entire seasons of ATHF are uploaded in the form of many "5 minute clip"s strung end to end? Yeah, that's a copyright violation.

      Then there's the question of stuff that isn't just blatant napstering, the stuff that's more or less completely unique to Youtube as a medium-- stuff like the terrible "Anime Music Videos" that litter the site, or the hilarious "abridged yu-gi-oh" episodes some guy's been making by cutting episodes down to 5 minutes and redubbing the dialogue. This stuff is not flat out redistribution of copyrighted works. But it incorporates copyrighted works. It's also probably the most interesting thing about youtube. How does this fit into copyright law? And the answer is, well, it doesn't. It's a use of copyrighted material which was not conceivable at the time the copyright laws were written. In practice it's probably little different from the 5 minute Daily Show clips you refer to, and in a country with fair copyright laws it would probably be some form of fair use. But we don't live in a country with fair copyright laws, we live in America. So getting to keep this material on their site would require Google to spend many years in complex litigation that would have to effectively create new law to deal with the subject. Is Google willing to do that for a 3 minute clip of Dragonball Z clips set to Linkin Park? I doubt it.

    9. Re:Explain to me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I should have just modded you down, but oh well...

      The music in the background of a dance competition would likely be fair use. The five-minute segment from a T.V. show might be a copyright violation, but YouTube wouldn't be the infringer as long as they didn't do it / don't market it. Go to hell, k thx.

    10. Re:Explain to me... by John+Hasler · · Score: 1

      > ...they get seriously spanked in court.

      You might want to read up on the "safe harbor" provisions of the DMCA. Before they can be "spanked in court", seriously or otherwise, they must be proven to have ignored a takedown order.

      --
      Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
    11. Re:Explain to me... by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      You could mod me down if you want, Mr AC, but you'd still be wrong, at least in my jurisdiction. As someone who helps organise a lot of dancing-related events, I'm very familiar with the rules and regs in this area, and I guarantee you that recording a performance (including complete sound-track) other than for personal use can get you in trouble. As it happens, it's rarely worth Big Media's time to chase you, and it's normally the venues (whose licenses with the various umbrella organisations could be under threat as a consequence of the infringement) who get worried, but that doesn't change my point.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    12. Re:Explain to me... by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      In your country, perhaps. We don't have the DMCA here (though the EUCD is almost as bad on several counts).

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    13. Re:Explain to me... by forgotten_my_nick · · Score: 1

      If you report the content it gets nuked. So the issue isn't that they aren't stopping it but the community itself is not stopping it.

    14. Re:Explain to me... by Nasarius · · Score: 1

      No, it's not. There's a very good reason that live music sharing sites specifically tell you to cut out any "house music" from your recordings before sharing them. The venue may have the right to play some music before the show, but you don't have the right to record and distribute it.

      You are, as the GP indicates, talking out your ass and using "fair use" as a silver bullet, when in reality it covers only a narrow range of cases.

      --
      LOAD "SIG",8,1
    15. Re:Explain to me... by evilviper · · Score: 1
      is a 5 minute daily show clip a copyright violation?

      Most definately.

      You could probably get away with much shorter clips of the show, if you actually DID SOMETHING with them, as opposed to just directly copying it... Throw in some narration, some criticism of the show, etc. In fact, The Daily Show itself, using clips from other News shows, is a good example of actual fair use... As opposed to everyone here, who thinks fair use means you can do anything you want with copyrighted material.

      Does youtube (now google) have some sort of common carrier for video defense they could claim?

      DMCA Safe Harbor provision. If they take down videos at the first notice, they are blameless.
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    16. Re:Explain to me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm very sorry, but AMVs (Anime Music Videos) predate YouTube by quite a bit.

  26. 1.65 billyun. by Inoshiro · · Score: 2, Interesting

    1.65 you say? Why keep working -- that's just shy of 25 million dollars in stock per employee. I'd cut and run. Wouldn't you?

    Why stick with a company that has a potentially uncertain future, when you can go and start doing whatever you want (founding various cool companies that might be even better), or simply go do charity work.

    --
    --
    Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
    1. Re:1.65 billyun. by kevin.fowler · · Score: 4, Funny

      Dear Google, Thanks for the 25 million junior bacon cheeseburgers. I hope you like getting sued. -The management

      --
      Bury me in mashed potatoes.
    2. Re:1.65 billyun. by kma100 · · Score: 3, Informative

      The VC's and founders take a larger percent of the total than the rest of the employees. So the $25MM you mention is way off base.

    3. Re:1.65 billyun. by Chris+Pimlott · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What makes you think that the stock is evenly distributed among all the employees? Don't forget that the VC firm also has a big chunk of it (quite possibly the largest chunk). After that, the founders will have the lion's share.

      Anyhow, they can't just sell the stock and run. They'll have to wait some specific amount of time before being able to sell.

    4. Re:1.65 billyun. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, they might really like what they're doing, but yeah, I'd start thinking about a new project if I worked there. (Assuming it's actually evenly distributed among the employee, which sounds unusual to me.)

    5. Re:1.65 billyun. by LetterRip · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "Why stick with a company that has a potentially uncertain future, when you can go and start doing whatever you want (founding various cool companies that might be even better), or simply go do charity work."

      Because the terms of the purchase almost certainly included clauses such as the stock not being tradable for 5 years, and that the employees agreed to remain for 3 years or such.

      LetterRip

    6. Re:1.65 billyun. by chundo · · Score: 1

      Here's a hint... when a company is the brainchild of one or two people - and ESPECIALLY when it is a young company - any buyer is going to include a clause in the buy contract that requires said people to stay involved for a certain amount of time to aid in the transition. To do otherwise would be asinine.

    7. Re:1.65 billyun. by everphilski · · Score: 1

      that's before taxes...

  27. Ironic... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    If you can't beat em... join em.

    It will be interesting to see the slashdot comments relating to this... When microsoft buys a company it's because microsoft sucks and can't innovate... let's see how slashdot spins this one...

    1. Re:Ironic... by Overly+Critical+Guy · · Score: 1

      Bill, is that you?

      How's MSN Soapbox coming? Heh.

      --
      "Sufferin' succotash."
  28. Wow. by elzurawka · · Score: 1

    Google is buying up so many differnt start ups its crazy. Before you know it they will be offering full movies. This could quickly turn into a rival to iTunes music store. Google is quickly developing an online suite of tools that will rival anything that m$ or Linux can offer within a few years.

    It will be interesting to see who they partner up with next, and what the result will be with video.google.com and youtube.com. Will they merge? or will they just keep both going?

    --
    -EL
    1. Re:Wow. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I doubt google will directly compete with apple. With Google's CEO on Apple's board, it's going to be interesting to see how and if they compete. If they do, I'm sure he will have to step down out of a conflict of interest...

    2. Re:Wow. by reldruH · · Score: 1
      Google is quickly developing an online suite of tools that will rival anything that m$ or Linux can offer within a few years.


      Google isn't competing with operating systems like Windows and Linux. Operating systems help people create and work with content and with only a few exceptions (Writely and Google Spreadsheets, if that) Google is really just helping people organize and share their content more easily. That's what Gmail, Google Desktop, Google Talk, etc. all do. It's what YouTube does and will continue to do. In some areas Google competes with Microsoft but that seems to be more because Microsoft is imitating Google and purposely moving into areas where they are succeeding (Windows Live? Live Office?). My point is that Google is definitely not competing with Linux and actually greatly improving the Linux experience by having so many of their tools be web-based and cross-platform. I know that I might not have switched to Linux if it meant giving up the Google services I use so often. As it is Google and Linux make a great combination and I'd love to see more integration of Google technologies into Linux apps.
      --
      I've always pictured the color of OS zealotry as a sort of bright flamingo pinkish hue
  29. Sure, don't you know by Nybble's+Byte · · Score: 2, Funny

    tubes sound better than transistors?

  30. Why did YouTube take the lead? by ObligatoryUserName · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Is it because Google fumbled around trying to implement some sort of open-standards solution while YouTube built up a userbase with the corporate controlled but much more user friendly Flash format? (Egad, it even uses patented video codecs that Macromedia licensed!)

    That's at least part of the answer.

    Ouch Slashdot. $1.65 Billion. Ouch.

    1. Re:Why did YouTube take the lead? by assassinator42 · · Score: 1

      In case you haven't noticed, Google Video uses the Flash video format as well. Hasn't it been lie that from the start? Later, they added a way to download the original file, a nice option that YouTube lacks.

    2. Re:Why did YouTube take the lead? by ObligatoryUserName · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They based Google Video on a plug-in version of VLC until around sometime in Septmber of 2005.

    3. Re:Why did YouTube take the lead? by Snaller · · Score: 1

      but much more user friendly Flash format?

      Its not user friendly, its lame crap - and since i (as any sensible user) have flash blocked I can never see anything there without having to download the thing first.

      get over it.

      --
      If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
    4. Re:Why did YouTube take the lead? by evilviper · · Score: 1
      while YouTube built up a userbase with the corporate controlled but much more user friendly Flash format?

      Flash Video (FLV) isn't any more controlled than any other video format, it's just a bit nonstandard. It's not any harder to copy, or anything of the sort.

      (Egad, it even uses patented video codecs that Macromedia licensed!)

      Almost EVERY video codec is patented. MPEG-1 (expired) VP3/Theora and Dirac/Snow are the rare exceptions. What's more, the first are ineffecient, while the latter aren't ready for prime time.
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  31. Good idea? Bad idea? by Achoi77 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I had a quick discussion about this with my coworkers a few mins ago. Most of us generally agreed that there were certain things that google would definately want from youtube, but we were unable to put a finger on it.

    Some of us concluded that it was mostly going to be:

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

    While google has been picking up little things here and there, essentially this is google's first real "social networking" site that they have purchased. I say it in quotes because youtube isn't really a social networking site, but there are certainly aspects of it that cannot be denied.

    I say youtube lucked out and google really made a stupid purchase, it appears to me like it was an attrition attempt against the competition in internet space (yahoo? microsoft? myspace? - whoever they think their competition is atm, because I can't tell). I don't know.. I'm curious to see where this goes. Google definately wants to go into the multimedia distribution area, that's for sure. How they go about doing it, we'll have to see..

    1. Re:Good idea? Bad idea? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While google has been picking up little things here and there, essentially this is google's first real "social networking" site that they have purchased. So Orkut isn't a 'real' social networking site?

    2. Re:Good idea? Bad idea? by j3tt · · Score: 1

      Wow, you have exactly the same comment content as comment 16370973 guet made above ... Are you guys Clonetroopers?

    3. Re:Good idea? Bad idea? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This comment is NOT redundant!! The one above was posted 10 minutes AFTER this one. The guy above just found the first long post he could (long = +5 insightful, remember?) and ripped it off.

      Mods, check the time of the post before modding redundant!

    4. Re:Good idea? Bad idea? by Achoi77 · · Score: 1
      you should click on the link he referred to :-)

      His post was made 10 mins after my post, but his statement implies that the conversation that I had with my coworkers is with him - inferring to him being my coworker.

      I laughed out loud after reading it. Unfortunately I was mod-bombed so I was hidden underneath while someone stole my post (check his parent's post), but it's cool, I have karma to burn.

  32. Chance to make some money by edwardpickman · · Score: 1

    Time to buy some stock Puts on Google. One way or the other it's likely to drag down Google stock even if it's a positive in the long run.

  33. google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Does this mean that YouTube will now go into Beta status?

    Too, I wonder how google will integrate the two.

  34. implausibly stupid? by Surt · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I mean ... seriously ... they didn't think they could wipe YouTube off the map for less than 1.6B?

    Think of the advertising, software, and video servers they could have bought with that money.

    If I were a google stockholder I'd be a) furious and b) selling. This really makes google look like they're losing their way.

    --
    "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    1. Re:implausibly stupid? by bobsledbob · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well, remember, this is a STOCK ONLY deal. There is no cash exchanged. So, if you're angry, you should be angry at the dilution of the stock. But, you can't be angry at what "they could have bought with that money." To Google at this point in their history, the deal was practically free.

      You've seen that Simpson's where Bart works for a dotcom, right? You know, how the stock is worth toilet paper? That's somewhat close to the view from the inside when making deals using stock. It's like free money to them.

      --
      Beware of geeks bearing formulas.
    2. Re:implausibly stupid? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      You've seen that Simpson's where Bart works for a dotcom, right? You know, how the stock is worth toilet paper? That's somewhat close to the view from the inside when making deals using stock. It's like free money to them.
      But which is cause and which is effect? If they didn't do ridiculous "we'll give you $1.6 billion of stock, diluting all existing shares", would the stock be worth toilet paper?
    3. Re:implausibly stupid? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unfortunately have to agree with you. It looks like a BIG mistake. Like AOL bought Netscape or like Time Warner bought AOL. When dust settles, it will be interesting to see whether it is 1.65 billion down the tubes!

    4. Re:implausibly stupid? by Garabito · · Score: 1
      Think of the advertising, software, and video servers they could have bought with that money.

      Not so much, because it's not real money; they are paying in GOOG stock, which according to many people, it's overvalued.

    5. Re:implausibly stupid? by modecx · · Score: 1

      Think of the advertising, software, and video servers they could have bought with that money.

      Advertising? They don't need no stinking advertising. Heck, not too long ago, I heard "I'll google it later" come out of the mouth of a ~60 year old grandmother and cafe waitress named Fran in Wyoming. You know, it's one thing to hear that out of the mouth of a random college student. It's another thing to hear it out of the mouth of a random waitress in the middle of Wyoming. I've never known google to mass market its search services, outside of the search appliance, which isn't a service, strictly speaking. If there's anything that proves they don't need advertising, it's the fact that grandmother-waitresses in rural areas know your name. I wonder how many other technology names she knows? IBM? NCR? AOL?

      Just making this deal has both Google's and YouTube's names plastered all over the evening news. Every grandma in America heard about Google. You could hardly do any better, and by golly, it's free.

      --
      Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
    6. Re:implausibly stupid? by Surt · · Score: 1

      You could hardly do any better, and by golly, it's free.
      Free in the it cost $1.65 billion sense?

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    7. Re:implausibly stupid? by modecx · · Score: 1

      Free in the it cost $1.65 billion sense?

      Well, in the sense that you can catch the flu because you want a stuffy nose, but the muscle aches and vomiting are just an added bonus.

      --
      Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
  35. We all know that this was a mistake... NOT! by lonesometrainer · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Youtube was in deep trouble. First they didn't have a real business model. The whole company obviously was waiting for a white knight to save them, the numbers seemed to be painted red, deep red. And second, the obvious copyright reasons.

    Not the sort of company that looks like an attractive bride, does it?

    But this purchase was NOT a mistake. Why you may ask again? Short answer: peering agreements.

    Google has the fat pipes (read: dedicated lines) they are basically an owner of a worldwide internet backbone. They will be pushing massive amounts of data into other carriers networks. Pushing alot more data at internet-exchange-points than pulling mostly equals to big cheques. Nothing Youtube was dealing with, but Google does this sort of stuff.

    Imho Youtube will be a money maker, just because of the bandwith.

    1. Re:We all know that this was a mistake... NOT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      A recent BusinessWeek magazine article on Akamai Technologies, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts suggests they may actually be the content distribution network for Google. This is implied in the article:

      http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_39 /b4002094.htm?chan=tc&chan=technology_technology+i ndex+page_more+of+today's+top+stories

      It is highly likely that Akamai actually "owns" the internet content distribution backbone you describe.

  36. Bad move! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Let the lawsuits commence.

    YouTube is awful, I suspect Google only purchased it to prevent Yahoo, Fox or Apple from buying it. Not that I think some flash based garbage with no business model that was burning through both bandwidth and VC capital made for a good aquisition target.

    It'll be interesting to see how Google is punished for this move by the other players but I'll sit this round out waiting for bittorrent and open formats.

  37. Lawsuit in 3...2...1... by RingDev · · Score: 1

    How fast can Google get the IP off of their newly aquired servers?

    -Rick

    --
    "Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
  38. YouTubes been googled. by headkase · · Score: 1

    Now all google has to do is figure out a way to manage copyright and necessary royalty payments and pruning of material that can't be licensed satisfactorily between parties. Then they got to make a buck.
    For the majority of the little videos of skaters and stuff that are not advertising supported all Google needs is a universal micropayment system going in or an escrow account system going out to store payments until a threshold payment-unit is reached. And if you could use your standard bank debit card over the net that would be awesome too. You know - Infrastructure.

    --
    Shh.
  39. A discussion that I just had by TrisexualPuppy · · Score: -1, Redundant
    I just had a little talk about this merger with my boss (I.T. director) and the CFO of my company. I work at a ~1200-employee company, so these guys have to know what is going on. We pretty much agreed that Google was looking for what was making YouTube successful but didn't have the concept nailed down yet. It would be better to hit them now in their current market positron. We concluded the following. Google needed these:
    • 1. The users, and more importantly,
    • 2. the usage pattern of these users.

    While google has been picking up little things here and there, essentially this is google's first real "social networking" site that they have purchased. I say it in quotes because youtube isn't really a social networking site, but there are certainly aspects of it that cannot be denied.

    I say youtube lucked out and google really made a stupid purchase, it appears to me like it was an attrition attempt against the competition in internet space (yahoo? microsoft? myspace? - whoever they think their competition is atm, because I can't tell). I don't know.. I'm curious to see where this goes. Google definately wants to go into the multimedia distribution area, that's for sure. How they go about doing it, we'll have to see..
    1. Re:A discussion that I just had by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      MODS: This is a karma whore! The same post was made by another user 10 minutes before this one and is located below (or at http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=199925&cid= 16370443).

  40. $1.65 billion IN STOCK by tpengster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Keep in mind that Google is not paying dollars -- they are trading Google stock for YouTube stock. So even though $1.65b is a scary number, what you should be asking yourself is not whether YT is worth $1.65b, but whether it is worth 1.25% of Google.

    1. Re:$1.65 billion IN STOCK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > what you should be asking yourself is not whether YT is worth $1.65b, but whether it is worth 1.25% of Google.

      No, 100,000 youtubes would not be worth 1 google.

    2. Re:$1.65 billion IN STOCK by Lillesvin · · Score: 1

      No, 100,000 youtubes would not be worth 1 google.

      But 10^100 would equal one googol. :-p

      --
      "Live free or don't."
    3. Re:$1.65 billion IN STOCK by rm999 · · Score: 1

      But it is still worth 1.65 billion dollars on the market. That is like saying "Yes honey, I bought a car without telling you, but I bought it with 20,000 dollars worth of Chinese yuan, which are undervalued, so it's OK!"
      In the market a dollar is a dollar is a dollar. Just because it is overvalued does not mean it's worth anything less *right now*

      The only hitch in my reasoning is that selling 1.65 billion dollars worth of google stock would be a bit challenging :)

    4. Re:$1.65 billion IN STOCK by retiarius · · Score: 1

      just like when sun microsystems bought cobalt for 2% of the
      value of SUNW to dip a toe into the linux server business...

      even though SUNW crashed, the cobalt team & product line
      was disbanded, and everyone yelled at the CEO for
      "wasting $2B" when sun was supposed to fight off linux
      with solaris, ironically linux-on-sun still is worth more
      than two percent to them, with all the "goodwill" now written off.

      yup, monopoly money is not cash.

      these days, tech companies dilute their shares by 1-2% per year
      just for employee stock options, so spending another 1.25% on a
      "name brand" is peanuts.

  41. Bubble bubble bubble by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Lots of others out there still, Vobbo wants some love.

  42. Wow, that's alot.. by Duncan3 · · Score: 1

    But they paid LESS per copyright violation then anyone else! Less then a dollar per copyright infringement for sure.

    Nice deal!

    Too bad every IP lawyer in the US just got a call that the deep pockets took the bait, and will be working full time suing Google for months.

    --
    - Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
    1. Re:Wow, that's alot.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      YOU ARE AN IDIOT! Ha, ha ha ha HA HA HA HA ha ha HA HA ha!
      YOU ARE AN IDIOT! Ha, ha ha ha HA HA HA HA ha ha HA HA ha!
      YOU ARE AN IDIOT! Ha, ha ha ha HA HA HA HA ha ha HA HA ha!

      Seriously, get a fucking clue man. The studios aren't going to sue Google. Google fights lawsuits and wins. Google will THREATEN to take down the videos (which are helping the studios) unless the studios come to an agreement to turn YouTube into an ad-supported distribution network for full-length movies.

      Now, again...

      YOU ARE AN IDIOT! Ha, ha ha ha HA HA HA HA ha ha HA HA ha!

  43. Deep pockets by interiot · · Score: 1

    The anti-net-neutality companies will see Google as a giant deep pocket as well, now that YouTube has the resources to double-pay for its bandwidth.

    1. Re:Deep pockets by ubernostrum · · Score: 1

      The anti-net-neutality companies will see Google as a giant deep pocket as well, now that YouTube has the resources to double-pay for its bandwidth.

      Except for the fact that Google's deep pockets are full of fiber. Remember, they've been buying up dark fiber for years; all they have to do is light it up, and they could cut down a lot of their transit on other networks. The threat of that, and the resulting lost revenue, ought to be enough to keep ISPs in line.

  44. Googlified by imbaczek · · Score: 1

    All your tubes are belong to us.

  45. Google is full of bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All the geniuses and tests to make it as a google employee and at the end all Google do is buy companies left and right... reminds me of a younger Microsoft.

    Do evil my ass... MONOPOLIES ARE EVIL.

    Bow before Bill Gates the ONLY supergenius.

  46. At least Google's search engine works by Sloppy · · Score: 1
    My YouTube experience is:
    Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Macromedia's Flash Player. Click here to get the latest flash player.

    Neither Javascript nor Flash are required to show videos (all you have to do, is link to a .mpg) but they're required by YouTube to show a video. Lame.

    Perhaps Google will be fixing this?

    --
    As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
    1. Re:At least Google's search engine works by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A new google product that functions 100% without requiring you run arbritrary script is the exception rather than the rule. It's rather pathetic.

      There's a youtube dl listed on freshmeat, if it handles http://youtube.com/watch?v=_base36Hash then you should be able to watch the videos using mplayer... I guess.

    2. Re:At least Google's search engine works by John+Harrison · · Score: 1

      sloppy, have you tried tube sock? It allows you to download the video files directly using it.

    3. Re:At least Google's search engine works by evilviper · · Score: 1
      Neither Javascript nor Flash are required to show videos (all you have to do, is link to a .mpg) but they're required by YouTube to show a video. Lame.

      YouTube reencodes all videos to SWF/FLV format, so it's absolutely not possible to play them without the Flash plugin installed.

      FFmpeg/libavcodec is supporting more and more FLV files, so it will likely be possible to install mplayerplug-in and have most of YouTube working in the near future without Flash.

      Google Video gets around this by ALSO offering a DOWNLOAD link, where you can download the AVI/MPEG file instead of the FLV. Unfortunately, most of google requires javascript as well.
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  47. Nuclear Launch Detected by EmperorKagato · · Score: 1

    I smell doom for all advertising companies. Google, a company that makes revenue off of advertising purchases a site frequently visited by the world.

    It does not even matter if there are pending lawsuits against YouTube or Google. They'll find ever means to fight the suits or settle.

    I'm in shock the venture capitalist company didn't try to intervene when knowing their competitor was going to purchase their VC investment.

    Online + Video + TV + Advertisements + $400/stock company = Nuclear Launch Detected

    --
    ----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
    1. Re:Nuclear Launch Detected by Ninjaesque+One · · Score: 1

      What about investments and a $100,000-stock company? The price of stock also depends on the number of stock, too. Think about total valuation.

      --
      Ninjas and pirates. How piquant.
    2. Re:Nuclear Launch Detected by kma100 · · Score: 1

      Not sure I understand your comment - I suspect the "venture capitalist company" *wanted* to sell to Google. A 10x ROI is always good...

    3. Re:Nuclear Launch Detected by EmperorKagato · · Score: 1

      You're right.
      I would prefer a 10x ROI that way I could take the funds and invest in the company that bought my investment.

      --
      ----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
  48. A "must buy" for Google? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Thirdly, they have to buy something. I mean, they have to spend their money on something otherwise the company may be reclassified as a mutual fund by the SEC. Having too much cash can be a bad thing.

    Linky to another suspicious /.er.

    1. Re:A "must buy" for Google? by eln · · Score: 1

      It's not the SEC you have to worry about so much as your own investors. If investors see you have a lot of cash on hand, they get nervous. They want to see you either re-investing that money to grow the business (by doing things like buying other companies) or returning it back to them (in the form of dividends).

      If a company has a lot of cash, it needs to have a plan for that cash, or it's just wasting money. Investors don't like it when companies waste money.

    2. Re:A "must buy" for Google? by sporkmonger · · Score: 1

      Except that IIRC, Google's stock is split between two different types. Internal stock has something like 10 times the voting power of regular people stock. I don't think the stockholders have a lot of say in whether Google pays out dividends or not. That said, IANAI (I am not an investor). So, grain of salt.

    3. Re:A "must buy" for Google? by afidel · · Score: 1

      Apple and Microsoft would disagree with you. Both companies sit on large piles of cash relative to the value of the company yet I other than pre-Jobs Apple I don't hear a lot of complaining from the investment community.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    4. Re:A "must buy" for Google? by mysidia · · Score: 1

      Their class B shares are not publicly traded, and each has the voting power of 10 class A shares.

      Keeping a hold of a lot of unnecessary cash, can still drive investors away, though. All that means that the voting control is in the hands of the executives, and the public has no voting recourse against the management.

  49. Purpose by slidersv · · Score: 1

    No matter how good the initial intentions, if your primary purpose is to make money, the intentions will be corrupted.
    It's not a matter of IF. It's a matter of WHEN.

    --
    there is no issue with my network
    1. Re:Purpose by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, power corrupts, just read Lord of the Rings, dudes!

  50. Google made money on this by nate+nice · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Although I disagree with this long term, what most people haven't realized is that Google got YouTube for free. On news they might buy last week, their stock rose ~2%. It rose even more today with more news and will probably raise a bit more tomorrow. So, 1.65 billion in stock was given away which is something like 1.5% of the company. If they just increased the companies worth by 5%, did they not just make a profit buy "buying" this company?

    Long term it might not turn out that way, but annually this is great.

    --
    "If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer ..."
    1. Re:Google made money on this by MotorMachineMercenar · · Score: 2, Informative

      Correct. Google gained the $1.65Bn back (and change) as the share price went up from $423 to $429 within hours of the announcement on Monday morning. At 304 million shares outstanding the "change" adds up to almost 200 million...

      --
      "We have an A-Bomb...what more do you want, mermaids?" --I.I. Rabi, speaking in defense of Robert Oppenheimer
    2. Re:Google made money on this by Snaller · · Score: 1

      ...did they not just make a profit buy "buying" this company?


      Good, they are going to need it when people start suing them for copyright infringements.

      --
      If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
    3. Re:Google made money on this by dantheman82 · · Score: 0

      Someone needs to clue you in on this. When Google stock goes up a few percent on news, that doesn't necessarily count. People buy into positive news, but others are ready to sell/take profit once the news is priced in fully. So, let's see in a week...a month...by 2007. You are a bit too hasty in your analysis that they "paid it off" by having the market pay for it. The "loan" comes back with interest, and a few skeptics (like myself) who may be willing to short the stock.

      --
      This sig donated to Pater. Long live /.
    4. Re:Google made money on this by suffe · · Score: 1

      It all reminds me of a story I heard a few weeks back. One of the high profile IT-bubble people met a friend while walking his dog. The friend just loved the dog and asked if he could buy it. "Sure", he said. "It will only cost you $100.000". Needless to say the other guy thought he was crazy and didn't buy the dog. A short while later they ran in to each other again and he asks his friend if he managed to sell the dog. "Sure", he said. "And above the asking price no less". Stunned, his friend just looks at him. "The guy that bought it gave me two cats which are worth $70.000 each instead".

      Most likely not a true story, but it might help explain some of the millions.

      --

      Karma: 2.71828182846 (Mostly due to small, fun pills)
    5. Re:Google made money on this by evilviper · · Score: 1
      Good, they are going to need it when people start suing them for copyright infringements.

      The DMCA Safe Harbor provision will protect them from all lawsuits. So long as they take down each specific video as soon as they are notified by the copyright holder, they are held blameless.
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  51. This can be a beautiful marriage by Buddy_Gilapagos · · Score: 1

    This is the first Web 2.0 acquisition that truly make sense to me. Unlike other social networking websites like Myspace and Facebook, the money making potential is clear. Youtube owns the online video space. More folks uploading and watching video on youtube than anywhere else out there. One pesky problem is they heavily traffic in copyrighted material. No way a pesky startup can cut the deals it needs to cut to keep the copyrighted material on its site (I think the deals it has alrady cut with the major labels have been predicated on the fact that the labels were aware of the talks with google). Googles contribution will be to make the deals with the major content producers and set up revenue sharing advertising arrangements with the Major Content Producers. Don't expect to see less copyrighted material on youtube, expect to see more copyrighted material. This is the first step between an ad supported GoogleTV which could be a total game changer.

  52. I certainly hope so... chris diB-you reading? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    ..because flash sucks and flash on linux is double plus icky-sucky. At least google vids give you the option of downloading in a non flash format. I have yet to be able to use youtube because it is flash only.

    1. Re:I certainly hope so... chris diB-you reading? by chroot_james · · Score: 1

      I found that the problem with youtube is opening a flash video while you have something else open that has access to your sound device. Close any programs that use your sound devices and then close your browser and try youtube again. It works fine for me every time. It's really annoying, but at least you can use youtube...

      --
      Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
  53. A discussion other people just had by guet · · Score: 4, Informative

    That's funny, 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

    While google has been picking up little things here and there, essentially this is google's first real "social networking" site that they have purchased. I say it in quotes because youtube isn't really a social networking site, but there are certainly aspects of it that cannot be denied.

    I say youtube lucked out and google really made a stupid purchase, it appears to me like it was an attrition attempt against the competition in internet space (yahoo? microsoft? myspace? - whoever they think their competition is atm, because I can't tell). I don't know.. I'm curious to see where this goes. Google definately wants to go into the multimedia distribution area, that's for sure. How they go about doing it, we'll have to see..

    -----

    Are you a script? If so you should be changed to reply coherently to replies in your thread, that would be more entertaining. Simply copying posts is a bit dull don't you think?

    http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=199747&c id=16357565
    http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=199747&c id=16357445

    1. Re:A discussion other people just had by Dachannien · · Score: 1

      Ahh, the fun of mod points!

      I'd already posted in this thread, but going back in that user's prior posts, I found three others that were modded higher than -1, were still moddable, and were verbatim copies of other upmodded posts that had been posted about an hour earlier.

      Redundants all around.

    2. Re:A discussion other people just had by nine-times · · Score: 1

      Are you a script?

      I'm going a little off-topic here, but I've noticed this happening before and wondered the same thing. Word for word copies of other /. posts, sometimes reposted in stories that are completely unrelated to the subject matter in the original post. At first I wondered if it was a clever spambot, but there weren't any links inserted anywhere. If it is a script, I don't understand what the point is.

      Does anyone know?

    3. Re:A discussion other people just had by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Build karma over time, then use mod points from a group of such accounts to mod up comments from another account that promotes a product or point of view, giving said post both credibility and, perhaps more importantly, increased views.

      The end is nigh for social moderation without corresponding 'trust' networks.

    4. Re:A discussion other people just had by eraser.cpp · · Score: 1

      I don't personally use Orkut, but that Google owned social networking website has a pretty large userbase. Over 9% of Brazil's population are registered Orkut users. Sounds like they're more experienced in that market than you might realize. And why are you so quick to call the purchase "stupid"? You don't think that the folks at Google can come up with a good advertising strategy for YouTube?

    5. Re:A discussion other people just had by Achoi77 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      And why are you so quick to call the purchase "stupid"? You don't think that the folks at Google can come up with a good advertising strategy for YouTube?

      I wouldn't say the purchase of Youtube is stupid, rather the purchase of Youtube for $1.65 Billion. Considering the bandwidth costs, I honestly don't think that ad revenue is going to cut it. No, I beleive they bought Youtube simply becuase they didn't want anybody else grabbibg it first. As of right now Youtube is money going down the drain and while the potential is there, so I'm merely curious to see how this pans out.

    6. Re:A discussion other people just had by Alioth · · Score: 4, Funny

      They didn't actually purchase it with $1.65bn of money though - it was a stock transaction. So Google used its massively overvalued stock to buy a massively overvalued YouTube - so all in all, it sort of nicely cancels itself out :-)

    7. Re:A discussion other people just had by jez9999 · · Score: 0, Redundant

      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.

    8. Re:A discussion other people just had by Wellington+Grey · · Score: 1
      but there are certainly aspects of it that cannot be denied


      Watch me.

      -Grey
    9. Re:A discussion other people just had by pipingguy · · Score: 1

      I'm curious to see where this goes.

      Google is going to go after the education market and use video/animation to explain complicated subjects to otherwise bored learners.

  54. More information by Cosmo-san · · Score: 3, Informative

    A webcast of the conference call can be found at http://investor.google.com/webcast.html in real player and windows media player format. The good part is a few minutes in when they start taking questions.

    Most of it is about how each (youtube and google) will contribute to each other. They also talk a bit about financials; why google used stocks instead of cash, what youtube's revenue is, etc. Long webcast, but informative.

    "Google video will not go away, ever." - direct quote from the webcast. The only integration the talk about it about google search in youtube but do say they plan to integrate more.

    1. Re:More information by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Somebody needs to transcode that to ogg/theora.

  55. But won't this overload the internet? by stevenm86 · · Score: 1

    Because come on, now. The internet is not a truck. It's a series of Tubes.....

    Aaaah never mind.

  56. What is "evil"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The only reason anybody likes YouTube is because it's full of blatantly illegal content. YouTube is the new Napster. By buying Youtube, Google has put themselves into a position where they only have two options and both are "evil" from someone's perspective. They can continue hosting copyrighted material without permission and brazenly break the law, thus being "evil" to the coypright holders. Or they can stop hosting such content and effectively destroy the community that has built up around YouTube, thus being "evil" to Joe Random Netizen.

    How does Google's "don't be evil" mantra work if they allow themselves to become involved in situations where one man's evil is another man's good?

    Unless they have some secret plan for Youtube now that they've bought it that is so deviously brilliant I can't even conceive of what it might be, this really looks like a no-win situation for Google.

    1. Re:What is "evil"? by JymmyZ · · Score: 1

      Almost all the content on YouTube that I view is created and uploaded by users, not copyrighted material. I'm sure Google will maintain the same level of copyright protection on YouTube that they do on their other projects. There is plenty of media that can be shared via YouTube that doesn't infringe on any copyrights.

      --
      The unexamined life is not worth living
    2. Re:What is "evil"? by Ucklak · · Score: 1

      In addition, any copyrighted info is usually posted by a particular user or users that is trackable. Delete all content by a user and you've gotten rid of the offensive material.

      --
      if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
    3. Re:What is "evil"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The only reason anybody likes YouTube is because it's full of blatantly illegal content.

      Not so. My wife and I both like it for people's pet videos - particularly kittens.

    4. Re:What is "evil"? by mikek3332002 · · Score: 1

      Perhaps Google's purchase was partially funded by the copyright holders. They(copyright owners) get rid of the blantent illegal uploads
      (I doubt google wants to risk being sued)
      with out wading through the courts and google gets aquires new technology.

    5. Re:What is "evil"? by somersault · · Score: 1

      I hardly think Google is worried about being sued, as it's not that much of a 'risk' to them. They've done plenty of things to upset people before, like their Google library thingy

      --
      which is totally what she said
    6. Re:What is "evil"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the question is whether original user posted content is enough to maintain the current user base. I say no. youtube was a destination because EVERYTHING was on it. It was a bonanza.

      It reminds me of a skit I saw on youtube - where someone imagined the internet as an actual mall. The main character asks a passer-by about where he can find music. The guy points to two storefronts - one sedate storefront that sells music. A few people stream in and out. He points to another storefront - this one promising free music - hundreds of people stream in and out - squealing with delight.

      I personally went to youtube to see copyrighted content mostly. I'd say 70% of the time I ended up watching copyrighted content and only wathced other content after coming to youtube for said copyrighted content. Once youtube started cracking down on copyrighted vids, I went elsewhere, vsocial, streetfire, et al.

      So I understand your perspective - now consider the opposite and consider what percentage of the user base thinks similarly.

  57. "Stupid?" Please justify. by tpengster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    OK, I'm seeing a lot of posts calling this acquisition "stupid" and i'm seeing the word "bubble" a lot. Now, many of these posters may know exactly what they are talking about, they may be far more informed about the business prospects of both companies than I am.

    But if you just say "this is stupid" without any analysis of the future earnings of these businesses, you are adding nothing to the discussion.

    Consider the following: Google is paying approx. 3.85 million shares of Google for YouTube. What is the value of those shares? Probably less than you think. What kind of competitive advantage does google have to justify such a high P/E ratio? They have the smartest technical people in the valley, and a great culture, those have to be worth something. But I'd argue that thy aren't worth $430 a share. What happens to google.com's traffic once people start using MSN search by default in the IE7 search box? Well, I can't tell you exactly what will happen, but I've got a decent guess. It'll PROBABLY GO DOWN, at least the growth rate. Does this sound like a company that is worth 62 times earnings ($130b by market value)?

    I'd argue that if there's a bubble here, it's probably in the price of Google, not the price of YouTube. These things are hard to predict because you don't know exactly how the technology, and the underlying social dynamics of the users, will play out. And yes, the legal issues are thorny and I don't feel qualified to analyze those (though I'm sure Google's lawyers are more than qualified to). But i'd argue that Google ought to be making MORE acquisitons with its stock, not fewer.

  58. Golden Google by fm6 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    None of which explains why Google thinks YouTube is worth $1.65 Billion. There are a lot of big profitable high-tech companies that aren't worth that much. Selling text ads? They don't need to buy the company to do that. Selling video ads? They have their own video technology.

    Not that it matters. Google can spend its money its money the way it wants, because it has more than it knows what to do with, and because its stockholders are shut out of corporate decision making. So it can buy companies that have no hope of contributing to the bottom line (Picassa, Outride, lots of blogging and social networking providers). It can hire lots of talented people. (And not so talented. Some of the people who've gone there recently are better at self-hype than actually making stuff.) And it can do this without any concern about making money.

    Why is this bad? Because you have a lot of money, resources, and talent being used to subsidize what amounts to high-tech masturbation. Google gets bigger and bigger, and yet they release very few new products. And the products they do release stay in beta mode forever.

    And please, don't try to tell me that "beta" is just a marketing or legal gimmick. Products like gmail, Google Groups, and Google Maps have lots of cool features, sure. But they're unpolished, inconsistently implemented, and very poorly documented. But most of all, they lack the boring little features that separate a toy project from a a real product.

    Financially, Google is big success. But when it comes to pushing technological progress, they're a ship without a rudder. A very fancy ship, mind you, with free gourmet meals for the crew, and lots of conveniences and gadgets. But where is ship going. Nobody seems to know.

    1. Re:Golden Google by jvkjvk · · Score: 1

      None of which explains why Google thinks YouTube is worth $1.65 Billion. There are a lot of big profitable high-tech companies that aren't worth that much. Selling text ads? They don't need to buy the company to do that. Selling video ads? They have their own video technology.

      Google doesn't think YouTube is worth $1.65B. It also doesn't think it's stock is worth ~$400 a share. However, the two overblown figures tend to cancel each other out.

      Why is this bad? Because you have a lot of money, resources, and talent being used to subsidize what amounts to high-tech masturbation. Google gets bigger and bigger, and yet they release very few new products. And the products they do release stay in beta mode forever.

      So, another way of putting it is they are experimenting with entirely new fields of endeavour where *no one* knows exactly what will work in the long term and what won't. Some people would call this empirical research.

      Financially, Google is big success. But when it comes to pushing technological progress, they're a ship without a rudder. A very fancy ship, mind you, with free gourmet meals for the crew, and lots of conveniences and gadgets. But where is ship going. Nobody seems to know.

      That is correct. The strategy seems sound. No one does know where all these "toy projects" will lead. Instead of charging off in a direction behind someone who is "Leading" them forward, all those bright minds get to try and find their own directions. Things that work keep having more energy poured into them, things that don't, don't. How much better is that?

    2. Re:Golden Google by Abcd1234 · · Score: 1

      None of which explains why Google thinks YouTube is worth $1.65 Billion

      That's easy: it's about the users, stupid. Specifically, eyeballs... eyeballs that can now be targeted by Google's advertising. To Google, YouTube is nothing more than yet another delivery vector. And, based on YouTube's user base and brand recognition, they felt that vector was worth $1.65 billion... and given that adwords and adsense must start leveling off eventually (assuming they haven't already), they may very well be correct.

    3. Re:Golden Google by 14CharUsername · · Score: 1

      Google makes all of its money off of advertisements. Companies love adsense because it allows them to target groups of people they think are likely to buy their products.

      So you think Google should just rest on their laurels and stick to adsense? Or should they improve adsense? Social networks are a gold mine of demographic data. But maybe google should just ignore all that.

      And their beta products? Well if you're running a huge multibillion dollar corporation wouldn't it be nice to have a cross platform standard email client for your employees to use? If you have a lot of programmers, doesn't an improved newsgroups search help them? Gmail and Groups were developed for Google employees. They just let the rest of us use it too. And they probably make a little money off of them too.

      And the maps feature will some day make gobs of money. If I'm looking at a certain part of a city, they can reasonably assume that either I'm there or that I will be there sometime. They can get local businesses advertising on the web, when ordinarily they wouldn't bother since they only serve a limited area. But the maps won't be perfect overnight, there's a huge amount of data that needs to be entered into the database (street names, snesible driving directions, attractions, etc). So its a long term project, but definitely worthwhile since it will greatly increase the number of advertisers.

    4. Re:Golden Google by fm6 · · Score: 1
      So, another way of putting it is they are experimenting with entirely new fields of endeavour where *no one* knows exactly what will work in the long term and what won't. Some people would call this empirical research.
      It only counts as "research" if somebody is checking the results.
    5. Re:Golden Google by fm6 · · Score: 1
      So you think Google should just rest on their laurels and stick to adsense?

      Dude, did you actually read my post? Or perhaps I didn't make a fundamental point clear: all the ad revenue is a trap. It allows Google to spend money on all kinds of blue sky projects that never seem to go anywhere. At most companies, the need to turn a profit adds a sanity check. Somebody comes by and asks, "Is this project ever going to go somewhere, or is it just a Good Idea that didn't pan out?" Or in the case of many Google projects, somebody needs to ask "OK, you have something really great here, but when are you going to stop adding cool features and start doing the boring stuff that needs to get done before you can emerge from Beta?"

      The question is not whether Google can make money selling ads on YouTube. Of course they can. But they don't need to buy the company to do that. The only reason (well, the only good reason) to buy the company is for the people and for the technology. Are those worth 1.65 gigabucks? I'm not enough of an expert to say. But to me, this smells more of Google management's lack of accountability than of a bold strategic move.

    6. Re:Golden Google by CommieOverlord · · Score: 1


      Google doesn't think YouTube is worth $1.65B. It also doesn't think it's stock is worth ~$400 a share. However, the two overblown figures tend to cancel each other out.


      Uh, no. If I think my shares aren't really $400, then I spend them to go buy stuff that I actually think is worth $400. That way when other people realize my shares aren't worth $400, I'm still have $400 of stuff instead of $5 shares.

  59. Serious Business by Plutonite · · Score: 1

    What will happen to our copyright worries? How will google deal with the censorship issues recently involving Youtube? How will content management differ when you go from a 60-person company to becoming 1.25% of Google Inc?

    I think what most of us are worried about is this big-corporation-invites-lawsuits type of thing. In addition, Google has always been about profit. YouTube is charity in comparison. I hate to think about what would happen if Chinese users posted political satire videos and the Chinese government decided to send Google some email.

    1. Re:Serious Business by 42forty-two42 · · Score: 1
      I hate to think about what would happen if Chinese users posted political satire videos and the Chinese government decided to send Google some email.

      I doubt it would be hosted in China. If the chinese government wants it blocked, they'll block it themselves; I doubt google USA will hand over the IPs of the submitters.
  60. Google made Excellent money by paladinwannabe2 · · Score: 1

    What's even more interesting is that the more Google's stock goes up, the less stock they need to give to YouTube. If I read the press release correctly, YouTube won't receive the stock until Google and YouTube work out a few minor things. So if Google's stock rises 10% in the meantime, that's ~9% less stock YouTube gets in the end (though they get the same dollar value regardless).

    --
    You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
  61. Wow by Evets · · Score: 1

    That's 24,626,865 cheeseburgers apiece.

  62. Big Spenders! by aduzik · · Score: 1

    $1.65 billion? What is that, like four shares of Google?

    --
    If it's not one thing it's your mother.
  63. MS strategies by Shohat · · Score: 1

    Google is on the right path .

  64. Omission by monoqlith · · Score: 1

    There was an omission in the summary. Here, I'll correct it.

    "[...] Reportedly, YouTube will retain its brand and all its 67 employees, including co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who are now filthy fucking rich, bitch."

  65. Google The Acquisitor? by blueZhift · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This purchase makes me wonder if this is just the beginning of big acquisitions for Google. While YouTube is not Google's first acquisition, up until now most have generally thought of Google as a company that prefers to build its own stuff. Indeed, Microsoft has often faced derision for being a company that has grown by buying up companies with innovative products/ideas. Personally, I don't think there's any evidence that Google has abandoned the build it ourselves attitude. Given the buzz and interest in YouTube, the acquisition may be more of a defensive buy than anything else to keep it out of the hands of Microsoft or Yahoo.

    1. Re:Google The Acquisitor? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not hard to name google products and services that were acquired, at least in part. Blogger? Google Earth? Google Analytics is just a nice GUI for an acquired company's technology. Google has always been happy to buy technology instead of developing it.

  66. Retaining staff??? by Sathias · · Score: 1

    Reportedly, YouTube will retain its brand and all its 67 employees, including co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen.

    They have just had 1.5 billion dollars land in their laps and they are staying in their old positions? Now that is dedication.

    --
    Blessed are the 1337, for they shall pwn the earth.
  67. $1.65 billion in cheesburgers! by fm6 · · Score: 1
    ...what you should be asking yourself is not whether YT is worth $1.65b, but whether it is worth 1.25% of Google.

    Oh, bullshit. Something is worth what people are willing to pay for it. Somebody who owns 1.25% of Google is worth $1.65 billion. The fact that they don't have a checking account with a balance $1.65 billion is beside the point.

    You're suffering from the common illusion that it doesn't cost a company anything to print stock. That's nonsense. It's very popular nonesense, especially among executives who keep insisting that they don't need to account for the stock options they grant themselves. But it's nonsense all the same. Money doesn't came out of nowhere, and a company doesn't have more value just because it has more shares.

    IANAA (figure it out for yourself), but my guess is that they paid off YouTube's owners with stock because of the tax benefits. Give them stock, and they're just trading equity in one company for equity in another. Give them $1.65billion in cash, and they have a huge capital gain to pay tax on.

    1. Re:$1.65 billion in cheesburgers! by foreverdisillusioned · · Score: 1

      The fact that they don't have a checking account with a balance $1.65 billion is beside the point.

      It is precisely the point.

      You seem to be under the (very much mistaken) impression that YouTube could turn around and sell 100% of that stock immediately, at full price. I'm not a veteran investor, but I can assure you that it does NOT work that way. Let me let you in on a little secret--there is no magical regulatory entity that decides on a stock's price... that would kind of be contrary to the concept of "free market", wouldn't it? The more stock YouTube tries to sell, the less money they're able to get for it due to the very simple laws of "supply and demand." They can sell it for X - 1 tick where X is the most recent GOOG price and they'll sell a few shares, but within minutes (tops) there will be someone out there undercutting them, selling at X - 2 ticks. Now, I'm sure GOOG is very liquid, but 1.65 billion is still a huge number. If they wanted to get anywhere close to their full money's worth, YouTube would have to sell at a very slow rate, and pray GOOG doesn't fall in value in the meantime. I know Google is a favorite around here--I love 'em too--but most sane, long-term investors agree their stock is *obscenely* overvalued. Thus, it's actually quite a risk to sit there and slowly sell off GOOG stock over the course of lord knows how many years. With a relatively fast sell off (which still carries significant risk, given Google's particuarly pumped-up bubble), YouTube would inevitably end up with significantly less than 1.65 billion. How much less, I couldn't say--I wouldn't be too surprised if they lost as much as 25%-75% of it.

      I couldn't say for sure--I'm not an economist or veteran investor--but I can DEFINITELY say for sure that 1.65 billion in stock does NOT equal 1.65 billion in hard cash. In the late 1990's, I remember at one point Bill Gates had a net worth in the vicinity of $115-120 billion. His current net worth is around $50 billion. I'm sure some of that was given to charity, sure, but most of it was lost when his stocks declined in value. Stocks do that. Cold, hard cash does not (except in the context of inflation and FOREX, but I'm getting rather tangential.)

    2. Re:$1.65 billion in cheesburgers! by fm6 · · Score: 1
      there is no magical regulatory entity that decides on a stock's price.
      Yes there is. Same as any commodity: what people will pay for it.
    3. Re:$1.65 billion in cheesburgers! by foreverdisillusioned · · Score: 1

      What an amazingly pointless out-of-context, overly-semantic quote. The point is, people will NOT pay 1.65 billion dollars for 1.65 billion dollars' worth of GOOG stock, period. They might not pay anywhere remotely that amount unless the stock is sold off very slowly and carefully (and at great risk.) This is distinct from hard currency, which does not drasticallylose value as you spend it, even if you spend great quantities all at once.

    4. Re:$1.65 billion in cheesburgers! by fm6 · · Score: 1
      How can I be out of context, when you won't give me a context to be out of? You make a lot of strange, repetitive statements that seem to boil down to "stock isn't money". (Hey, no shit!) And maybe, "stock can change in value" (By golly, you're right!) That really doesn't have anything to do with the issue at hand. Which is really, how much is that 1.5% stake in Google actually worth? Of course it's not exactly the market value of the shares, because the shares are encumbered. But is it a lot less? My intuition is "no". Now, I could be wrong. But if you're going to prove me wrong, you're going to have to come up with something more specific than truisms about the nature of the marketplace.

      I'll say it one last time: paying somebody with stock is just a tax dodge. It's not a free lunch. Very few of those on Wall Street.

    5. Re:$1.65 billion in cheesburgers! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know Google is a favorite around here--I love 'em too--but most sane, long-term investors agree their stock is *obscenely* overvalued.

      I have to challenge that theory -- doesn't appear so insanely overvalued, from where i'm looking.

      Let's see.. it has a market cap of $130.57 billion, assets of $9 billion, with quarterly earnings growth of 70% probable future earnings of 4$ billion next year...

      That's puts it at what, 33x future earnings?

      There are tech companies that have been and maybe still are overvalued, but not Google, I think.

      Google is the premier search engine, the best, and the one most every computer user uses, and where every business will want to advertise their web site: they will have an essential search monopoly, since their competition has proven ineffective so far, and that's all worth a hefty premium.

    6. Re:$1.65 billion in cheesburgers! by Prof.Phreak · · Score: 1

      Oh, bullshit. Something is worth what people are willing to pay for it. Somebody who owns 1.25% of Google is worth $1.65 billion. The fact that they don't have a checking account with a balance $1.65 billion is beside the point.

      Problem with that argument is that as soon as some major chunk of shares are sold (and 1.65 billion worth is a large chunk), the price will drop, and those 1.25% of google won't be worth 1.65 billion anymore (but maybe 1.1 billion, for all anyone cares).

      And if that sale manages to set off some alarms,... heh, well, they could be worth a mere few million :-/

      There's not much holding google's stock price up except speculation. Yes, they're big and profitable, but they're not worth what the crazy mr.market is willing to pay for them. And mr.market isn't stupid---as soon as folks start selling, mr.market will adjust his numbers. It's only a matter of time until they drop---it's not an "IF" question, it's a "WHEN" question. (unless of course they manage to increase their profits 10x fold all at the same time keeping their stock price at where it is now---but how likely is that???; their size is working against them when it comes to multiplying their profits)

      --

      "If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy

  68. Google vs. MySpace? WTF?? by 4D6963 · · Score: 1

    There's something I just don't get from the CNN article. It keeps saying that MySpace is Google-YouTube's concurrent in the online video domain, with such statements as "he said Google needed to do something to become more competitive with MySpace, which currently ranks in second place in online video market share.", and talking about MySpace's "own video service", but WTF, I thought MySpace relied entirely on YouTube for videos, so how is MySpace in concurrence with Google-YouTube?

    --
    You just got troll'd!
    1. Re:Google vs. MySpace? WTF?? by EmperorKagato · · Score: 1

      Myspace launched its own video system.

      Google has Orkut, Wallop and a few other systems that can compete with Myspace.

      --
      ----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
  69. Yeah, but serving costs nothing for them by wsanders · · Score: 1

    This is a company that builds data centers the size of stadiums and has them situated all over, with bigger tubes than you can possibly imagine. When you've got that much capacity, the extra tubes for even a big service like YouTube is not that huge compared to what you already have. Slap another couple Petabytes on your Google File System and you're done.

    NOW they can index, distribute, etc, ALL THAT CONTENT with no strings attached. The World's appetite for lipsyncing teenyboppers, people with Pepsi/Mentos coming out of their nose, and kung-fu guys running up walls is insatiable.

    Next? Maybe a Tier 1 or Tier 2 ISP?

    --
    Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
  70. It is a merger by mapkinase · · Score: 1

    Essentially, it is a merger. True, one part is much larger than another, but stock swapping is symmetric.

    --
    I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
  71. In Soviet Russia by DolomiteZipper · · Score: 0

    In Soviet Russia... Google purchases You(Tube)!!!

  72. For all you lazy people by Toxicgonzo · · Score: 1

    For those of you who didn't RTFA and don't want to, here it is summed up:

    http://googleconquest.ytmnd.com/

  73. A lot of... by Kamineko · · Score: 1

    I daresay there'll be a lot of high-fives in the YouTube offices... lucky them. ^_^

  74. Goodness Gracious! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the ignorati has valued google at over $100 BILLION?

    dorothy deadpans... "oh my!"

  75. purchase == free? by bobdevine · · Score: 1

    One way to look at the cost
    to Google is compare its market cap
    before the deal to after it.

    The share price moved up over $10 from
    when the Wall Street Journal printed the
    rumor until the deal was officially announced.

    Multiply that price rise by the number of
    outstanding shares (~200 million) and the
    market value of GOOG is now *more* than
    the $1.65B stock swap.

    Bob Devine

  76. Crazy by z_gringo · · Score: 1

    Didn't someeone just say that you would have to be nuts to purchase youtube? Because they will get sued as soon as they have any money? Who was that?

    --
    -- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
  77. The bubble is going to burst when? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    $1.6 Billion?.....Is everybody high?

    I am waiting for the next crash to happen now.

  78. Chump change by mgabrys_sf · · Score: 1

    For everyone going gonzo on the price - here's a perspective one of those about Microsoft's losses on the Xbox 360 as quoted in Next Generation:

    "Since Microsoft entered the console market in 2001, the Xbox strategy has been one of heavy investment, leading to significant losses in its home and entertainment division.
    The losses are clear in recent financial reports. For fiscal year 2005, Microsoft's game division posted a $485 million net loss. In fiscal 2006, ended June 30, 2006, the division lost $1.26 billion."

    So in fiscal 2006 Microsoft lost nearly as much as Google's stock deal. Only Microsoft didn't lose stock - they lost real money.

    http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_conte nt&task=view&id=3963&Itemid=2

    1. Re:Chump change by Shados · · Score: 1

      Basically what it means, confirmed by what you say, is simply that a large audience is worth hundreds of millions. Microsoft lost all that money on Xbox to try and steal itself an audience. Google is doing the same thing, but with very little effort... so in their eyes, its worth it. Especialy since running youtube will be a joke for them.

    2. Re:Chump change by mgabrys_sf · · Score: 1

      Yes actually. The only downside is if the audience is wrongly measured. In this case more than 70 million people world-wide go to YouTube. The same - if not more - amount of money was lost by companies like Excite@Home / AT&T trying to aquire "eyeballs" back in the first dot-com mania when those eyeballs were either wrongly measured or didn't exist at all.

      The reason YouTube has gotten (and with Google's help continue to develop) contracts with content providers is because those numbers are far too juicy for the content owners to quibble over when they could be a new way of directing viewers. That plus the safe-harbor laws and previous co-operation that YouTube has done which is a 180 from Napsters' responses back in the day.

  79. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  80. This is stupid by RzUpAnmsCwrds · · Score: 1

    This is absolutely stupid. There is simply no way that a company that has never made a dime in profit and has yet to figure out how to even break even on their bandwidth costs should be worth $1.65 billion. Particularly not to a company that already operates an extremely similar service already.

    Google can't figure out how to spend their money. Exponential growth doesn't work for long in the real world. Unfortunately, that's what the investors expect. And they will be very, very unhappy when Google is unable to deliver.

  81. as long... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As long as they don't buy pornotube.com... :-)

  82. goldmine by e**(i+pi)-1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Google has realised that the days of TV as we know it, are counted. The future is to search for specific movie content and get it, without having to keep an eye on dozens of channels, watch stupid adds or be informed with filtered news or tainted, politically biased comments or worse, propaganda payed by governments. It is an other consequence of globalisation. Everybody can become a content provider. The public finally can determine what it wants to see and what to toss away.

    This is going to explode in the next years. Consumers are already able to build their own program and contribute to it. User feedback of millions of people is automatic and be valuable for content providers. The web allows to monitor exactly when and what people see and when to target which group with advertisement. It will be no problem to milk this new medium. It will also be fantastic for research of all kind. Companies, political parties etc which are able to harvest from a large amount of data and even pay for that. It will be the key for political power too.

    It will a gold mine. 1.65 billion now is nothing. Lawsuits will be coming but this will come from the losers of the game and dropping those will not matter anyway. Let them protect their content so that nobody will watch it any more. Being "in the show" will be the main goal in this new game. It might even happen that companies pay for what one calls "copyright infringement" today They will finally realize that spreading the content is more important than to disappear in the oblivious.

    1. Re:goldmine by Vexorian · · Score: 1
      Google has realised that the days of TV as we know it, are counted.
      We can only hope...
      --

      Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
    2. Re:goldmine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google has realised that the days of TV as we know it, are counted.

      I completely disagree. Tv in the past 3-4 years has, imo, gotten significantly better. Bigger budget productions really began with 24 which personally I remember as the first tv show that made itself feel like a movie. With hd, surround sound, and an increase in dvr adoption tv shows are becoming much more movie-like. The nice thing is that we get them in short, 30-60 minute increments, but we get so many of them as to allow for much more complex storylines and character development (just try and imagine how hard a Lost movie would suck...).

      On the other hand, though, there have also been brilliant comedies like Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Arrested Development. The late 90's and early 00's were overflowing with absolutely terrible sitcoms, but that seems to be over now. The laughtrack era is dead, and smart writing is finally making its way to tv.

      Also, don't forget about sports- everyone said espn was crazy to start an all-sports network, and they have 4-5 channels carried on most digital cable plans.

      Personally I think its a combination of movies sucking, hd coming into its own, and the death of the cookie cutter sitcom, but tv is far from dying.

  83. The New American Dream by cazbar · · Score: 1

    Make something, make it good, and sell it to a big corporation for lots of money.

  84. Dr. Eric Schmidt = loser? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not trying to be a troll, but look what happened to Novell. I am not blaming him for the entire situation there, but still he was brought in to turn it around and made a lot of bad mistakes. Is he doing the same at google?

  85. DMCA son, DMCA by raehl · · Score: 1

    You don't have to be sure. You only have to take down the content if the person who owns the copyright for that content asks you to.

    As long as you do that, you're not liable for other people posting copyrighted material to your site.

  86. obligatory by vermox · · Score: 2, Funny

    That's some Lanley-Institute-of-Monorail-Conducting-level definition:
    MONO = ONE
    RAIL = RAIL

    --
    --- /dev/null
  87. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  88. Re: HAVE? by Migraineman · · Score: 4, Funny
    Well where did this come from? i would of never of thought have Google buying YouTube!
    Nah, still doesn't make any cents {sic}. I can picture you with the vane {sic} bulging out on your forehead. Thank you.
  89. And Aero chairs are supposed to be a waste of cash by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    C'mon Google. No way it's worth that much.

    Wish I had that much money to waste!

  90. operate seperately by Danathar · · Score: 1

    "Reportedly, YouTube will retain its brand and all its 67 employees, including co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen."

    yea..right..for about 6 months. It makes absolutely NO sense to have both video.google.com AND youtube at the same time under the same company. One of the two will get merged into the other.

  91. GooTube by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sounds like cocksnot,
    cockgoo,
    tubegoo,
    tubesnot?
    tubecum?

  92. google to become the next god? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the flying speghetti monster wouldn't reply when i email him.. i lost all faith.. but wait.. lets all hop on the google-train(tm) and bow to our mighty google gods.. might as well now since they plan on buying the world in a couple of months

  93. Outsourcing? by Bob+Cat+-+NYMPHS · · Score: 5, Funny

    Slashdot is outsourcing its +5 Funny to India now?

  94. Hey YouTube, where's my money!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So this is the future of the much talked about "user generated content" sites? Let's see, we upload our stuff and...you make all the money. Right. Man, did I miss a step, I have to go over that again...I do the work, you get the money. Yes, I got that right the first time. I still don't have any money. Let me go over that again...you get billions, I get nothing. Hmmm...I must be...an artist.

  95. LOL by Achoi77 · · Score: 1

    Thanks for referring to my post, I've had a good laugh. Too bad I got modded redundant, but it's cool; I'm more interested in the dialogue and (I think) I have karma to burn.

  96. Sued out of existence? by Kadin2048 · · Score: 1

    So I take it you'll be calling your broker and shorting their stock tomorrow, right?

    Because I'm sure that they never thought of that possibility.

    --
    "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
  97. 1.65 billion to buy, how much to settle? by Arcady13 · · Score: 1

    The whole thing is a lawsuit waiting to happen. It's one huge copyright infringement. It's also one of like 5000 "post your crappy video" websites.

    What a waste of money. I thought Google was smart. I also thought 1998 was over. How sad.

  98. In other news today... by masdog · · Score: 1

    Facebook founder Mark Zuckenburg claimed that Google was going to buy his social networking site for the price of infinity billion dollars, but balked when users complained about a new feature that allowed them to see Zuckenberg's live webcam showing him rolling in money.

  99. I haven not used IE for a while.... by jotaeleemeese · · Score: 1

    ... but I very much doubt that previous version of explorer had Google as the starting point.

    Being the default search engine means squat if there is one better and less intrusive out there.

    --
    IANAL but write like a drunk one.
  100. I quote by jotaeleemeese · · Score: 1

    "As its negotiations with Google neared a conclusion, YouTube announced partnerships with Universal Music Group, CBS Corporation and Sony BMG Music Entertainment.

    Those alliances followed a similar arrangement announced last month with Warner Music Group. "

    The dinosaurs are giving way. THe original poster was right, and you are, well, you.

    --
    IANAL but write like a drunk one.
    1. Re:I quote by cptgrudge · · Score: 1

      So you think that these "partnerships" are somehow indicative of the grand ushering in of a brave new world? That putting music videos and TV shows up online will somehow make it all different? This is still all about money. Don't think that just because these corporations do this means that they have "seen the light" and are changing/have changed their ways. Everyone will still get compensated. Well, except for the average artist; those musicians will still get screwed and fade into obscurity, because they didn't get quite popular enough or sell enough albums.

      Know where the real change is at? The slow takeover of these conventional media producers by smaller, more agile labels and media producers. With digital distribution costs tending toward zero with time, the Internet being pretty much accessible to anyone, and production costs dropping fast for anyone with an average computer, the large corporations may not be needed anymore. Even the manufacture of physical media is becoming easier and cheaper. It's happening in the indie community already. Granted, the signal:noise ratio might be worse, but social networking services like last.fm (and countless others) will act like a filter. They will connect people with music and media that they will like based on their tastes, and could bring a truly talented musician's release to the top fairly fast without the need for a music label's "promotion". It's like word of mouth on crack. We see this slowly starting to happen with music, and it will happen with television, and movies as well.

      Don't get me wrong, I think (hope) that we will enter a world where everyone will get the media they want, for a fair price, the artists will be compensated fairly, and happy. Everyone wins, and we still could have popular superstars. The problem is that it sounds far too idyllic for the current market. The big companies are really entrenched in their ways and resistant to change. A new generation of executive management that grew up with online music may be needed in these companies before any real adapting takes place. The number of indie labels may explode in that time. The majority of dinosaurs didn't adapt; they died because they couldn't adapt fast enough, and were replaced by the smaller, though more adaptable mammal. I think the same will happen here.

      To bring the thread back onto the oddly off-topic subject, one of the traits of the medical definition of euphoria is that the feeling of happiness is not necessarily well-founded. I don't think that "a big change" is imminent, I think that evidence does not point to it happening, so I believe the view is not well-founded. And the GGP poster had a rather giddy, euphoric tone. You are right about one thing, though...I'm still me.

      --
      Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
  101. And people are forgetting deals already in place by jotaeleemeese · · Score: 2, Informative

    Quoting from one of many sources this morning:

    "As its negotiations with Google neared a conclusion, YouTube announced partnerships with Universal Music Group, CBS Corporation and Sony BMG Music Entertainment.

    Those alliances followed a similar arrangement announced last month with Warner Music Group"

    So the copyright aspect is frankly a moot point, Google is also promising to share the proceeds of any future revenue with video owners, that will fence off most other challenges.

    --
    IANAL but write like a drunk one.
  102. Unlikely by jotaeleemeese · · Score: 1

    From one of many sources today:

    "As its negotiations with Google neared a conclusion, YouTube announced partnerships with Universal Music Group, CBS Corporation and Sony BMG Music Entertainment.

    Those alliances followed a similar arrangement announced last month with Warner Music Group. "

    So they are covering their bases.

    It will not be long before any who is who company in the bussiness of making videos and films will have some kind of agreement with Google, any other company feeling victimized will have to go through normal proceedings to remove material from the site before even contemplating getting any damages (you can't go from finding copyrighted material to be awarded damages, you have to allow for the copyright infringment to be remediated, as long as Google is diligent on this regard they will never be in serious trouble).

    --
    IANAL but write like a drunk one.
  103. Picassa? Groups? by jotaeleemeese · · Score: 1

    Those two come to my mind now. They were bought.

    You are assumoing too much and thinking too little.

    --
    IANAL but write like a drunk one.
  104. Sued by whom? by jotaeleemeese · · Score: 1

    "As its negotiations with Google neared a conclusion, YouTube announced partnerships with Universal Music Group, CBS Corporation and Sony BMG Music Entertainment.

    Those alliances followed a similar arrangement announced last month with Warner Music Group. "

    So none of those. And many more will follow for sure, it is clear where the action is and oter companies would be stupid not to want a piece of the action (either as content providers, let Google do the advertisment and collectin pof revenue, or as competitors doing the same, which would be foolish to the extreme).

    And sued for exactly what btw?

    --
    IANAL but write like a drunk one.
  105. In the contrary. by jotaeleemeese · · Score: 1

    Now the companies themselves will put the clips on the site or will not mind if fans put the clips there.

    In the one hand they will share Google's add revenue (as Google has already pointed as part of their startegy), on the other hand they would get free advertising for the show.

    --
    IANAL but write like a drunk one.
  106. You simply have no idea what you are talking about by jotaeleemeese · · Score: 1

    The AOL Time Warner deal was a merger.

    This is an outright aquiscition.

    There are so many differences that it is not even funny.

    For starters YouTube nominal value is so small in comparision to the whole of Google's that if they would just shut it down tomorrow there woulod be no substantial loss to Google.

    Also the guys that started YouTube become Google employees, by no means they are acceding to the board of directors or anything like it like in the case of the AOL-TIme Warner merger.

    And most importantly, you can see some real synergies staring everybody in the face (sorry about my corp-speak) between YouTUbe and Google. These were not so clear between AOL and Time-Warner.

    --
    IANAL but write like a drunk one.
  107. Why remove them..... by jotaeleemeese · · Score: 1

    .... if you can make a deal?:

    "As its negotiations with Google neared a conclusion, YouTube announced partnerships with Universal Music Group, CBS Corporation and Sony BMG Music Entertainment.

    Those alliances followed a similar arrangement announced last month with Warner Music Group. "

    --
    IANAL but write like a drunk one.
  108. Why user's comments should not count? by jotaeleemeese · · Score: 1

    "That show was crap"

    "Oh my, that rocks! W00t!"

    Those sound like criticism to me. Unless you are a snob and want only some kind of scholarly criticism only to be allowed.

    --
    IANAL but write like a drunk one.
    1. Re:Why user's comments should not count? by evilviper · · Score: 1
      "That show was crap"

      "Oh my, that rocks! W00t!"

      If you have someone actually in the video, saying things like that, you could make a very weak case. Even then, a 5 minute clip is probably extremely excessive. If the video is just a direct copy of The Daily Show without any changes to it (and the opinions are seperate from the video) then you've got nothing at all.

      Those sound like criticism to me. Unless you are a snob and want only some kind of scholarly criticism only to be allowed.

      No, you're redefining criticism. In fact The Daily Show itself, showing short clips of other TV News shows, is a perfect example of what is actually legal (as opposed to the laws everyone is making up in their head around here).
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  109. You forgot c by jotaeleemeese · · Score: 1

    c) Make a juicy deal with major content providers.

    Once you have all the people that count on board, you can diligently take down material of comapnies that don't wanna play with you. Whose loss would that be once all the major companies are Google's bussiness partners?

    YouTube was already dealing with the problem that way:

    "As its negotiations with Google neared a conclusion, YouTube announced partnerships with Universal Music Group, CBS Corporation and Sony BMG Music Entertainment.

    Those alliances followed a similar arrangement announced last month with Warner Music Group. "

    --
    IANAL but write like a drunk one.
    1. Re:You forgot c by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      Once you have all the people that count on board, you can diligently take down material of comapnies that don't wanna play with you. Whose loss would that be once all the major companies are Google's bussiness partners?

      Google's. Anyone and his brother can find ripped copies of a big artist's latest album or the newest blockbuster movie. IME, people often go to the big video sites like YouTube looking for more specialised things that aren't so freely available. Those are the videos that are most damaging infringements (since the people behind them don't have the profit margins of Big Media and can't just write it off as "the price of doing business") so it certainly won't harm the producers/distributers of all the niche content to be removed from Google. It will, however, reduce the number of page hits on the video sites and therefore the number of ad views, and that's the one thing likely to scare Google.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
  110. Strangely reminiscent by kaysan · · Score: 0
    of the internet bubble popping in 2000..

    Seeing how Youtube has never in its history turned any profits, and still gets bought for 1.3 million dollars.

    1. Re:Strangely reminiscent by kaysan · · Score: 0
      errr.. billion dollars... 1.65.. billion, not million obviously.... obviously?

      that in turn reminds me of that book Snow Crash, the hyperinflation storyline

  111. Google is beating expectations since going public by jotaeleemeese · · Score: 1

    So pray tell us exactly what are you basing your insightful comments on?

    Google is making money. Tons of it. More that investors expected. And this on spit of the major shareholders clearly stating that the direction of the company is not driven by profitability alone.

    If I would trust a company nowadays to do a clever aquiscition that would be Google.

    Their *tracked* record tell us the real history.

    Although I agree that exponential growth is not sustainable in the long term, linear growth surely is (heck, is what economy is all about) so I will wait before launching a tirade about a company that clearly gets it.

    --
    IANAL but write like a drunk one.
  112. What the f... are you talking about? by jotaeleemeese · · Score: 1

    They were already dealing with the people that could start lawsuits:

    "As its negotiations with Google neared a conclusion, YouTube announced partnerships with Universal Music Group, CBS Corporation and Sony BMG Music Entertainment.

    Those alliances followed a similar arrangement announced last month with Warner Music Group. "

    They don't have to negotiate with every content owner, only the major ones. All the rest will follow or fall by the wayside.

    You may not want that people can now post their crappy videos, but this opens the field fro small time video and film producers to a global audience without much intermediation. That by itself is a very interesting development.

    Betting a small amount (in relative term) in an idea that clearly has potential is completely different to 1998. Back then companies were created with little more than a website and marketing, where money was spent in lavish parties and nor in products.

    YouTube has something that is clearly working, which is popular, and for this reaons has commercial potential. Completely different to opening a web shop selling pet food and hoping to make millions....

    --
    IANAL but write like a drunk one.
  113. Wonder why this hasn't come up yet? by FrostyCoolSlug · · Score: 1

    I for one welcome our new video sharing overlords..

  114. Reminds of of puff puff pass by cheekyboy · · Score: 1

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0466771/

    puff puff pass the movie, or aka LIving High where two guys wanted to get into business selling tiny adds, its complex.

    --
    Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
  115. Waste of Money by [000000] · · Score: 1
    What a waste $1.65bn (£883m), Dumpalink is far better.
    Anyhow whats wrong with the google videos?

    YouTube has 100 million videos viewed every day and an estimated 72 million individual visitors each month. So what!

    Google has also signed distribution deals of its own, with Sony BMG and Warner Music to offer music videos. Google also said that in addition to the advertising-supported video content, music videos from Warner would be available for purchase as downloads at $1.99 each.

    Source BBC Google buys YouTube for $1.65bn http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6034577.stm

  116. Duhh... permit UT then lazy bones by cheekyboy · · Score: 1

    Tsk tsk, tired excuses, you are so lazy to not just white list UT/GV.

    Firefox Flash blockers still let you selectively activate flash content.

    Dont be a spoilt 70s geek, get over it.

    Do you have a better video solution? mpeg1 perhaps? yer right. Its too late to distribute a new player, we're stuck
    with flash. Ie7 wont even make a dent even if it seamlessly does Wm9 in 1ms after a click.

    Hey, so much for Adams Platform, those guys are in for fraud, and if they had a clue, in 1998 they would have made a free player
    and sold an encoder dirt cheap and licence it. Maybe their test video was southpark in 4bit colour converted to geometric objects.

    --
    Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
    1. Re:Duhh... permit UT then lazy bones by Snaller · · Score: 1

      Too raving.

      --
      If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
  117. The pyramid scam by cheekyboy · · Score: 1

    Any wonder that the us dollar bill has a pyramid on it.

    Ah it all makes sense now.

    Btw watch out for the home loan refis to kick in, 1 trillion dollars of refis at higher % are gona hurt a 1000 titatic loads of people.

    450 billion in interest only loans is also going to hurt.

    Sell now or get out of the building industry fast.

    --
    Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
  118. 1.65 billion by C_Kode · · Score: 1

    YouTube will retain its brand and all its 67 employees, including co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen.

    If I just got paid 1.65 billion for a website I created, I don't think I would want anything to do with it after that. I would mark it up as success and move on. Maybe it's just me, but I would say the job was complete. Next.

  119. 2 Happy rich dudes by MrCopilot · · Score: 1
    A message from Chad and Steve http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCVxQ_3Ejkg

    Needless to say they could not be happier.

    --
    OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
  120. Re:pieces of paper by dragonbutt · · Score: 1

    They are buying the sight not for money, but stocks.

    If the lawyers shut them down, what have they lost?

    Now the stocks are worth $1.65 billion. if the stock price falls, the price they payed for the sight would calculate to a lot less.

    --
    it was like that when I got here.. I wasen't here when that happened... second shift musta done that....
  121. Parent is wrong by harl · · Score: 1

    No that's not what the DMCA says. Please go read the DMCA. The RIAA or the MPAA can sue Google at any time if they want.

    What you are thinking of is the strong arm section that has been spun as protection, The Online Copyright Infringment Liability Limitation Act aka DMCA 512 aka DMCA takedown. What the DMCA says is that if the copyright holder sends a letter claiming that something is infringment and Google takes it down then Google, at that point, is immune to lawsuit on that item.

    In short. Take it down or we sue. If you do take it down we can't sue. This is a win/win/loose situation. The copyright holder gets the item taken down. The ISP is immune. The poster gets fucked.

    --
    I find being offended by me offensive.
    1. Re:Parent is wrong by Dan+Ost · · Score: 1

      You would prefer that the ISP incurs liability so that the poster can
      post content that he has no right to post?

      What sense does that make?

      You and I may not agree with most intellectual property law, but as long as
      it's the law, you can hardly fault the ISP for complying with it.

      --

      *sigh* back to work...
    2. Re:Parent is wrong by harl · · Score: 1

      You would prefer completely bypassing the courts and forcing an ISP to remove, with no proof of violation, what may be a fair usage?

      What sense does that make?

      This debate is off topic. I was mearly pointing out that the DMCA works differently than the GP claimed it did.

      --
      I find being offended by me offensive.
  122. AM I THE ONLY ONE? by djdavetrouble · · Score: 1

    That hates overcompressed splotchy blotchy video with crappy overcompressed audio?
    I love being able to see some things that people dig up, but cmon, can we all agree
    that it LOOKS LIKE SHIT.

    --
    music lover since 1969
  123. I would hate to be a temp at YT today. by myth_of_sisyphus · · Score: 1

    (Been a temp at a dot-com. It sucks.)

  124. Grandparent is right by TheoMurpse · · Score: 1

    Incorrect, you say? Apparently you did not read the first link I provided, which is the official summary of the DMCA of 1998 from the U.S. Copyright Office.

    1. Re:Grandparent is right by harl · · Score: 1

      No you're wrong. They are only immune if they take the requesting item down. If they leave it up they still have liability. Read the law.

      --
      I find being offended by me offensive.
    2. Re:Grandparent is right by TheoMurpse · · Score: 1
      If you read my original post, you'll find this:
      "Upon receiving proper notification of claimed infringement, [Google] must expeditiously take down or block access to the material" - Youtube did this, as evidenced by the many times Lazy Sunday was taken off Youtube at NBC's request (note that Youtube was never sued for this activity)
      You see? I did get it right.
    3. Re:Grandparent is right by harl · · Score: 1

      No you didn't get it right. You think there is a carrot. There is only a stick with this law. Please go read the law not some summary. When they receive the notice they have no legal obligation to take down the material. If they do not take down the material they can be found liable for copyright infringment. If they do take it down they are immune. Thus everyone takes it down. This is the stick.

      They've tricked you into thinking this law helps ISPs. Go look at the uproar about this law when it was passed. The only group this law helps is people who want to outlaw fair use. This law allows copyright holders to bypass the courts and strong arm anyone they want. Before the DMCA the ISP had immunity since they are considered a common carrier. The DMCA basically removed common carrier protection. No proof of infringment needed. No court needed. All you have to do is send a form letter.

      --
      I find being offended by me offensive.
    4. Re:Grandparent is right by TheoMurpse · · Score: 1
      When they receive the notice they have no legal obligation to take down the material. If they do not take down the material they can be found liable for copyright infringment. If they do take it down they are immune.
      I never said there was a carrot. And I never said there was a legal obligation: take it down, and you are immune. Don't, and you get sued. That's what I've been saying.Here is Wikipedia agreeing with me.

      Also, if you read the law (and I have it open in another tab, switching back and forth so I can post relevant information), you'll find in Section 202 (aka Section 512 of Title 17 of the US Code) (c) (which is legislation explaining when a Service Provider -- in this case Google -- is not liable for copyright infringement induced by its users):
      IN GENERAL- A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief [...] for infringement of copyright by reason of the storage at the direction of a user of material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider, if the service provider--

      `(A)(i) does not have actual knowledge that the material or an activity using the material on the system or network is infringing;

      `(ii) in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent; or

      `(iii) upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material;

      `(B) does not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity, in a case in which the service provider has the right and ability to control such activity; and

      `(C) upon notification of claimed infringement as described in paragraph (3), responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity.

      Google satisfies (A)(ii), (B), (C), which are sufficient for removing liability. And since we're discussing what each other is failing to understand, I assert that you fail to understand what "limitations on liability" means.
    5. Re:Grandparent is right by harl · · Score: 1

      Rereading your post I see that it's factualy accurate. It seems my arguements were colored by an assumption you felt the DMCA is a good thing. Gomen.

      Rereading all of this I do notice one problem for Google. If they put AdSense on the YouTube pages or prefix the videos with ads then they would potentialy be in violation of (B) and thus immediatly liable.

      --
      I find being offended by me offensive.
    6. Re:Grandparent is right by TheoMurpse · · Score: 1
      Gomen.
      Iie. :) I guess I should have made it clear that I'm very much against the DMCA. Also, I thought about (B), but the language states that Google would have to be directly profiting from the infringement, which I bet a good lawyer could prove is not what AdSense is doing. Google may be profiting from the infringement, but indirectly. I think "directly" would mean charging people money to view the content. In other words, Google is profiting from other people viewing infringement. Thus, they are profiting indirectly, via a third party. At least, that is how I would make the argument in court. It would be difficult (and I'm not a lawyer yet), but if I were a betting man, I'd put my money on Google prevailing instead of the RIAA on that point.

      Peace, and I enjoyed our exchange better than the one in which someone ended up foe-ing me because I explained the law and they did not like it. It's discussions like ours that make Slashdot worthwhile to me. Thank you.
  125. gogle- you tube by chameleon-lemur · · Score: 1

    you tube is a good website and a good investent for google

  126. Beta by Bogue · · Score: 1

    Does that mean YouTube is now beta?

  127. I'm not so sure. by Snaller · · Score: 1

    And even if it does, it only does so in the US.

    --
    If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating