{"id":147,"date":"2006-10-09T19:03:18","date_gmt":"2006-10-09T23:03:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitstep.net\/blog\/2006\/10\/09\/google-buys-youtube\/"},"modified":"2006-10-09T19:03:18","modified_gmt":"2006-10-09T23:03:18","slug":"google-buys-youtube","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/blog\/2006\/10\/09\/google-buys-youtube\/","title":{"rendered":"Google buys YouTube(!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since it’s not Thanksgiving in the US, news has been anything but slow today. Google has officially bought YouTube<\/a>, sending shockwaves throughout the online world. Now, a $1.65 billion USD deal is going to be news-worthy anyday, but what makes this even more remarkable was how fast the Google-YouTube deal went from a rumour to a fact. I’d been hearing rumours of potential YouTube buyers<\/a> since way back in the summer, but in no way was Google a top prospect. <\/p>\n

Some will say<\/a> that this deal officially marks the beginning of “Bubble 2.0”, since YouTube is not yet profitable<\/a>. I’m assuming Google has some pretty bright people working for them, so what was their reasoning behind this move? Certainly, $1.65 billion USD isn’t a lot for them, ever since their IPO, but the real concern is YouTube’s high operating costs – serving up all those videos takes up a lot of bandwidth, which in turn translates into large monthly bills.
\n<\/p>\n

Cornering the market<\/h3>\n

However, the major reason behind this move must have been to corner the online video-sharing market. Google Video<\/a>, launched not long ago, was a direct competitor to YouTube, but it received lukewarm support from the majority, who were already entrenched in YouTube. By grabbing hold of YouTube, Google effectively has a near-monopoly in the video-sharing market. They must have some future plan for how they will profit from these sites, besides just advertising revenue and “getting their name out there”. <\/p>\n

Furthermore, operating costs aren’t the only problem they need to think of. Copyright violations are rampant on YouTube, and companies haven’t been afraid to pursue these matters in court – Google will certainly be dealing with more potential lawsuits in the coming months and years over material used in videos shared on their sites. <\/p>\n

Overall, I don’t know where I stand on this. On the one hand, this could prove to be a brilliant move if Google can successfully lead its YouTube branch into profitability – if it doesn’t, it will be a hallmark and a defining moment of “Bubble 2.0”.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since it’s not Thanksgiving in the US, news has been anything but slow today. Google has officially bought YouTube, sending shockwaves throughout the online world. Now, a $1.65 billion USD deal is going to be news-worthy anyday, but what makes this even more remarkable was how fast the Google-YouTube deal went from a rumour to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,103,17,104],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}