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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.
a series of 'tubes?
SO glad that YouTube will now be sheltered by "the good guys" ... assuming they stay the good guys *cautious glance over shoulder*
will video.google.com still exist as it is I wonder?
nothing
The bubble will burst on this purchase. There's too much copyright infringement going on @ Youtube.
hiphop-universe.com
This is so ungoogle. Google builds, not buys. Google indexes, not serves. Google already had a video service.
Google is jumping the shark.
The Bubble is back! Bubble 2.0, but a bubble nonetheless.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
.. 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.
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
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?
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.
Bradley Holt
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.
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.
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."
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.
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
Let the lawsuits begin.
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
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.
1.65 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.
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
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.)
tubes sound better than transistors?
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.
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..
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.
Does this mean that YouTube will now go into Beta status?
Too, I wonder how google will integrate the two.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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/
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.
All your tubes are belong to us.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
..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.
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:
c id=16357565c id=16357445
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&
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=199747&
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.
Because come on, now. The internet is not a truck. It's a series of Tubes.....
Aaaah never mind.
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.
HAVE! It's HAVE, fucktard. How is it possible that you make THREE mistakes with TWO words??
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.
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.
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.
Bill, is that you?
How's MSN Soapbox coming? Heh.
"Sufferin' succotash."
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.
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.
in soviet russia....
youtube buys google
That's 24,626,865 cheeseburgers apiece.
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.
$1.65 billion? What is that, like four shares of Google?
If it's not one thing it's your mother.
Google is on the right path .
My Starcraft 2 Blog
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."
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.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
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.
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.
I was actually searching for these.
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!
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?"
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.
For those of you who didn't RTFA and don't want to, here it is summed up:
http://googleconquest.ytmnd.com/
I daresay there'll be a lot of high-fives in the YouTube offices... lucky them. ^_^
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
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.
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:
e nt&task=view&id=3963&Itemid=2
"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_cont
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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.
Make something, make it good, and sell it to a big corporation for lots of money.
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.
paintball
That's some Lanley-Institute-of-Monorail-Conducting-level definition:
MONO = ONE
RAIL = RAIL
---
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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
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
I'm picturing Daffy Duck in "Duck Amok".
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
"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.
Slashdot is outsourcing its +5 Funny to India now?
The latest Slashdot meme.
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.
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."
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.
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.
My Sysadmin Blog
What do AOL, Yahoo, MSN, and the like snap up to compete?
FileRatings ( http://www.fileratings.com/Video ) lists these as the top sites:
http://www.metacafe.com/
http://www.castpost.com/
http://www.clipshack.com/
http://www.blinkx.com/
http://dailymotion.com/
http://blip.tv/
http://vidoegg.com/
http://www.vimeo.com/
http://www.phanfare.com/
http://vobbo.com/
http://ourmedia.org/
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
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.
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.
... 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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
.... 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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
I for one welcome our new video sharing overlords..
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Needless to say they could not be happier.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
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....
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.
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
(Been a temp at a dot-com. It sucks.)
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.
you tube is a good website and a good investent for google
Does that mean YouTube is now beta?
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