Google Buys Out YouTube?! What the--?

Man, was THIS ever a backstabber! For all those loyal to YouTube over the years, now on top of Google Video, now YouTube is forced to join the cause. Here's the story below:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061009/ap_on_bi_ge/google_youtube;_ylt=ApmuroHgUzZpM1oYpM4hI3qs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3OTB1amhuBHNlYwNtdHM-

Why on earth can't these popular entities do well on their own? That's one reason why the economy's going south is all because of stuff like this.

They sold for $1.65 billion! You wouldn't have sold? I would have. In a heartbeat.

Yeah, I know, but then again, look at who you're affecting, I'd take the money, but I'd show a soft side for those who were loyal to my site, and for those people I'd have to lay off, no matter why jobs are hard to come by.

Now that's what I call independent news, Yahoo News slating Yahoo for falling behind... :)

RAM

Yeah, but...

"YouTube will continue to retain its brand, its new headquarters in San Bruno and all 67 employees, including co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. Meanwhile, Google will continue to run a less popular video service on its own site."

It sounds like business will continue as normal, except Google will be footing the bill/collecting the profits (when they appear).

Yeah, very true. Hey, look at the bright side, tho. At least it's Google, and not profit-making Apple or Microsoft. If Apple bought 'em, I'd say that you'd see iTube instead of YouTube, and then iTube would wind up charging you for every video download to d/l into your iPod. If it was Microsoft, well, the only way you'd be able to watch YouTube with MS would be with that clowny, inferior WMP 10 or 11, and if you don't like Media Player, then you'd lose half your audience right there. At least Google will still keep YouTube's videos free of charge, and they won't confine you to one format to watch them in.

What about Pr0noTube?

(Anyone ever find themselves linked to that craphole? *shudder*)

The YouTube sale is crazy! In the end it's just another ... why didn't I create that website story. Good for them ...

Id never even heard of YouTube. I know its a bit about computers, but its just Buisness news. I didnt complain that Asda were being mean to their customers when they sold to wallmart. And I wouldnt have posted about it here

And why you are posting about it now? It was on the BBC Main news nearly 20 Hrs ago, and so must be at least a day old

Google = Monopoly.

What's funny is the deal was finalized over a meal at Denny's.

Mleh, meal at Denny's. Yep, the old "invite your competition to lunch in suits and ties, and strike an old briefcase deal" routine. That's been used too many times before. Have one guy with a notebook on the table, geeking his way to another innovation, then there's another guy with a briefcase with contracts, stocks (sometimes cold, hard cash), and a mountain of pink slips for the people that work there. I've been there, done that before, and the receiving end ain't pretty, either...

Sure, anyone who could afford the infrastructure to support 25 petabytes of bandwidth per month could have done this. I don't know that they've ever stated this, but people have estimated their bandwidth costs alone to be in the range of $1 million per month.

Yeah....I always wondered how they made that site work. There isn't much advertising there, and they use tons of bandwidth...so where they actually making any profit at all, or just pouring piles of $$$ in there to somehow regain later when the site had become huge (e.g. by selling it to Google).

Ragnar

p.s. Though, I like YouTube...lots of the Daily Show there... :-)

I seriously doubt it. I'm sure it's expensive but when you're drawing that much of a crowd it's easy to pull down investors from many angles. Were they making money yet? That's the only question. It doesn't matter what the bandwidth cost only what they were profiting or not.

Jeremy

The article said they were yet to be profitable. Before the 1.65 billion infusion that is...

Ah, well good decision then. I'm sure their investors (debt collectors) are happy ;) YouTube is going to become a pretty big brand.

Touche.

Sniffing-nora!!!

I love YouTube - even uploaded onto it myself - I hope Google don't mess it up. There is a lot of illegal stuff on there - music videos, tv shows and film clips - I hope it isn't all deleted.

Ahem... :)

GooTube?

I'm just curious as to how many letters the owners of YouTube have received to remove user-uploaded copyrighted material to their site.....and what Google may do to prevent that.

while 1.65 billion sounds like an awful lot of money (especially considering youtube was started in a garage just a year and a half ago!), it's still peanuts for google, in the grand scheme of things. Google's market cap is a whopping 130 billion dollars (*)right now, and this was an all-stock transaction. Essentially that means that youtube was valued at just 1.25% the worth of Google itself.

(*) http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=GOOG&c=DIS,GM&t=

Of course, the let the avalange of copyright lawsuits ensue, now there's actually someone will billions in cash in the bank behind it...

Well, yeah, but I don't think anyone is thinking it's a lot of money from Google's end. It's a lot of money on YouTube's end - start a business from your garage, less than a year later sell for 1.65 billion!

Since when does a stock holding equate to money in the bank? Remember what happened to all those high value stock holders the last time the bubble burst.

It would have to burst a hell of a lot to drain 1.65 billion. Whenever those golden handcuffs run out, they'll still have hundreds of millions they can cash out with. Unless you're predicting the death of Google, in which case I'm fascinated to hear what you have to say.

I want to know how those 2 guys paid for Youtube's bandwidth costs up until now...

> I want to know how those 2 guys paid for Youtube's bandwidth costs up until now

I had read that they got VC money to start up. I could be mistaken, or mistook another startup that got VC money (they come and go so quickly these days)

Yeah, almost any web-based business anymore can come and be bought out at almost a year or two after they launch. Web-based businesses are easy targets to that little routine I mentioned earlier in this thread, and the government doesn't seem to do anything about it, since they can't pinpoint where the exact location of that company is. That's the problem that I see, atm.

Tuble.