Gadgets & Tech – SAN FRANCISCO - Google today said it will buy YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock in a deal that unites one of the Internet's marquee companies with one of its rising stars. A YouTube representative said the startup's primary spokeswoman won't be available for comment until after the stock market closes.
Ryan:
After much speculation last week, the rumors are indeed true. Google will purchase YouTube for an all stock exchange worth about $1.65 Billion.
Netscape followed up with Om Malik who complimented his thoughts from Friday with this statement: "Is this a good deal for Google? I'm not quite sure, just like one cannot be quite sure about eBay buying Skype. How it works out, remains to be seen, but one should expect legal challenges to mount for Google as a result of this combination, but then i am the same guy who didn't think this deal was going to happen."
Chris Pirillo, tech expert and founder of Lockergnome.com, had this to say: "Great. Now Google controls the horizontal... and the vertical, too."
Outspoken tech guru and founder of HD.net, Mark Cuban, just posted on his blog: "It will be interesting to see what happens next and what happens in the copyright world. I still think Google Lawyers will be a busy, busy bunch...It will be interesting to see how this impacts DRM. As it stands now, there is no DRM on all that video being offered from Google or YouTube...Am I suprised, by the Google YT deal. Yes. Does it open up a whole new world if they go liability free? You have no idea." Check out his full post for his complete thoughts.
UPDATE 6:10 PM EST:Google has updated one of their blogs detailing the conference call that took place earlier today. You can read the entire transcript, but some things to note from it are that not much is known at the moment, the two engineering teams have literally only had a couple of hours to collaborate. Also, Google claims that it's own video service Google Video is neither going away any time soon, nor ever.
2006-10-09 17:31:24
I wonder if they will re-brand it as Google Video? Or maybe they'll change Google video to Youtube? It would be kind of strange if they had two different services that did the same thing. Does anybody see http://youtube.google.com/ coming on?
All afternoon I keep seeing little comments by people thinking Google will start to charge a subscription for viewing content on YouTube. That seems ridiculous to me. Google has a long track record of developing / acquiring properties to draw viewers into the overall fold. Some properties they monetize with advertising. Some they do not. In the end they still win for giving so much away for "free."
> kam0, how does a new-found billionaire party? :-)
I don't know, ask me in a couple of years ;-)
> OMG, $1.6Billion, but all stock, I guess tonight YouTube founders will be partying like it's 1999.
I was referring to the fact that 1999 was the year that had the greatest number of all-stock (i.e. no cash) takeovers worth billions and then it all went bust as well as to the Prince song.
Go Google!
I hope this helps you make M$ irrelevant and immaterial.
Some people will always bitch, moan and groan when there is a change. Don't forget that some changes are really good for browsers like us. Only time will tell.
My gut feeling is that Google will let YouTube build upon its own success and provide enough resources for its future.
Well I'm not suprised utube was purchased it was all just a matter of time. However I don't think google will change it very much. Even if they do it's not like there aren't a thousand other video download sites we can't all turn to. Sites never stay popular for long something always comes and replaces it, such is the way of the internet. Does any one still remember live journal which was forgoten due to a thing called myspace?
I think Google are a responsible enough company to look after YouTube and keep its userbility.
YouTube needs someone with deep pockets to handles the copyright lawsuits in the early days.
To read my take on it see:
http://news.netscape.com/story/2006/10/10/analysis-of-the-youtube-acquisition-by-google
Google is now the real serious web investor. The price $1.65 billion make trash of my view of web 2.0 as a low cost start up audition into a bigger fish. The price of on-demand tv, movies, service and documents will need to repay the debt. $1.55 billion for brand and program cost $0.55 billion. $0.55 billion would make a lot of VC investors of web 2.0 start-ups happy. But if it all stock it may make its cost back this year. Make it work people.
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