Google buys Youtube

Woebot

Well-known member
Are Google mad?

Surely most of the content worth watching is copyright protected?

It'll be like Napster being bought.
 

swears

preppy-kei
It shows you how strong the brand name is, because Google could set up an identical site so easily themselves. Google video isn't a million miles away, ideas-wise.
I just hope it doesn't mean a purge of copyrighted material, all that would be left to watch is a million crappy video blogs of emo kids talking about their boring lives.
 

adruu

This Is It
must be nice to have the buying power to snatch up a popular company for the hell of it. i dont think it's really a deal to provide content, but more like having the chance to buy Nielsen or an aleph for the clickhappy collective unconscious in all of its emotional, nostalgic, funny home video, tv blooper tedium
 

mms

sometimes
It shows you how strong the brand name is, because Google could set up an identical site so easily themselves. Google video isn't a million miles away, ideas-wise.
I just hope it doesn't mean a purge of copyrighted material, all that would be left to watch is a million crappy video blogs of emo kids talking about their boring lives.

well google video came b4 and it's pretty similar but it failed as youtube became the field leader.
yes youtube will have to cut all the copyrighted material, but it's also in a strong position to negotiate with owners of the copyrighted material too and get a better quality of service, at the moment i imagine no one really wants to deal with youtube as they have so much uncopyrighted material and i imagine a heap of lawsuits so they are probably blacklisted with the big boys.

most of youtube is kids farting on screen, but there are endless ways of improving the filter quality and establishing some standards. It's a strong brand so i reckon google will just make it stronger and probably work alot better if they use all the tools at their disposal, tchnical and marketing and business wise.
 
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blunt

shot by both sides
Surely most of the content worth watching is copyright protected?

They've already signed a number of deals between them - with Universal, Sony BMG, Warners etc. See BBC News article here. Big corporations seem to be learning from the mistakes that they made with Napster v 1.0, albeit very facking slowly.
 

swears

preppy-kei
It's a strong brand so i reckon google will just make it stronger and probably work alot better if they use all the tools at their disposal, tchnical and marketing and business wise.

Maybe the technical side could be improved, but in terms of material, I like the fact it's a bit sketchy and all over the place. I wouldn't want Google to come in and start deciding what is acceptable and what isn't. Next you're going to have to pay to watch clips.
 

mms

sometimes
Maybe the technical side could be improved, but in terms of material, I like the fact it's a bit sketchy and all over the place. I wouldn't want Google to come in and start deciding what is acceptable and what isn't. Next you're going to have to pay to watch clips.

sure not whats not acceptable etc but it could be organised a bit better. but it will probably go the way of everything else eventually , ie favouring the interests of large corporates, but fuck that cos when it does things will pop up to replace it easy as you can say 'you are not authorised to view this page'
 

Freakaholic

not just an addiction
They've already signed a number of deals between them - with Universal, Sony BMG, Warners etc. See BBC News article here. Big corporations seem to be learning from the mistakes that they made with Napster v 1.0, albeit very facking slowly.

From a Billboard article;

"Vivendi's Universal Music Group said Monday it agreed to give YouTube viewers access to thousands of music videos. The company said it and its artists will be compensated not just for the official videos, but also for user-generated content that incorporates Universal's music."

So, it does seem that they are learning. Instead of fighting users using their material, artists can get compensated when others like it enough to use it.

Perhaps we could start making videos of bands' songs that we want to make more money....
 

charlie

Member
Google, one of the worlds most visited websites launched Google Video... they stuck it on the main search navigation and no1 used it.. years later YouTube reached its huge peak, Google brought it to save face... the brand was nothing great even though it sounds better then "Google Video" (their website) so they brought it to take advantage of its popularity (why not? had $10bn to play with...) for adverts etc. but as they took copyrighted stuff down it started losing hits...
 

Rambler

Awanturnik
The other theory is that Google were eying up YouTube long ago, launched Google Video as a tool to crush most of their competitors, whilst allowing YouTube to get massive, then in they step and boom, Google pretty much have the monopoly on internet video sharing...
 

charlie

Member
The other theory is that Google were eying up YouTube long ago, launched Google Video as a tool to crush most of their competitors, whilst allowing YouTube to get massive, then in they step and boom, Google pretty much have the monopoly on internet video sharing...

Google Video crushed no competitors...

It flopped! End of. No one used it, no one really knew about it, therefore allowing YouTube to become huge.

Google obviously did a due diligence about 3 months before they released a Press Release and of course brought it..
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
It's not a theory, that's exactly what Google tried to do, and failed.

They were offerd YouTube six months ago for $550M but passed. But they've got a better deal now. It's worth the money on the eyeballs alone for Google's core advertising business, never mind the potential media downloading business they will launch.

They've put aside a paltry $125M for lawsuits, which is nothing. Bear in mind that they did deals with all the big content firms before buying it - they want another route aside from Apple.
 

bassnation

the abyss
It's not a theory, that's exactly what Google tried to do, and failed.

They were offerd YouTube six months ago for $550M but passed. But they've got a better deal now. It's worth the money on the eyeballs alone for Google's core advertising business, never mind the potential media downloading business they will launch.

They've put aside a paltry $125M for lawsuits, which is nothing. Bear in mind that they did deals with all the big content firms before buying it - they want another route aside from Apple.

talking of apple, what do you think their strategy will be re. the iTV thing? the whole home entertainment / streaming media thing is already a very crowded market place. wonder if they've got any tricks up their sleeves?

the fairplay restricitions seem a little tighter for video than they do music, and right now this is the one big put-off with their offerings here.
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
talking of apple, what do you think their strategy will be re. the iTV thing?
My usual answer to that costs about 80 grand and takes four weeks :).

the whole home entertainment / streaming media thing is already a very crowded market place. wonder if they've got any tricks up their sleeves?
But the short and not very interesting version is that their end game is to wind up with between 10 and 25 % of the digital media market. Even 5% would do. Cos the digital media market will wind up being bigger than the current media market and more valuable. That will make Apple between five and ten times more valuable than it is today.

The key statistic is still that Apple has 80% plus of the digital media market and 80% plus of the digital player market, by both volume and value, and that this share is rising as the volume has risen. (Plus, from Apple's point of view, 60% of their profit comes from digital media players - they are already a digital device'n'media company which also happens to sell computers.) Of course, the relative value of the media market is still tiny.

In other words, the market is Apple's to lose. They know that, and it's a question of when they lose market share and by how much. The end game is Apple fucking the record companies and signing artists direct to iTMS and sharing out the middle man profit to artists, consumers and themselves, while becoming the film companies' distribution partner of (no) choice.

In the end it might be a fight between Apple / Google and a Microsoft / NewsCorp alliance with the other media firms scrambling for cover and the consumer electronics firms dissolving into mush. I think Apple will "lose" and be another 5% market share bit player but that still makes for a pretty successful future.

the fairplay restricitions seem a little tighter for video than they do music, and right now this is the one big put-off with their offerings here.
Yeah, but fairplay isn't just about copy protection - DRM is a lot more nuanced than that.
 

Freakaholic

not just an addiction
viacom fails to realize the potential of this

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i24ec0428fabfab5dc3718bc3d84e6b31

Viacom Sues Google, YouTube
March 13, 2007 - Legal and Management

MTV parent Viacom Inc. said on Tuesday that it was suing Google Inc. and its Internet video-sharing site YouTube for more than $1 billion over unauthorized use of its programming online.

The lawsuit, the biggest challenge to date to Google's ambitions to make YouTube into a major vehicle for advertising and entertainment, accuses the Web search leader and its unit of "massive intentional copyright infringement."

Viacom filed the suit with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeking more than $1 billion in damages and an injunction against further violations.

Viacom contends that almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of its programming have been uploaded onto YouTube's site and viewed more than 1.5 billion times.

"YouTube's strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site," Viacom said in a statement. "Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws."

Viacom said its decision to sue Google followed "a great deal of unproductive negotiation" with the company.

Representatives for Google and YouTube were not immediately available.

Google shares fell 0.8 percent to $451.12 in early Nasdaq trade. Viacom Class B shares were down 1 percent at $39.15 on the New York Stock Exchange.

-------------------------------

If people are viewing "clips" 1.5 billion times of tv shows on viacom, doesnt that amount to free advertising? Wont it spur a few people to actually watch the tv shows?

This seems absurd to me, and much akin to shooting yourself in the foot.
 

Guybrush

Dittohead
YouTube has got much worse in recent months, I think. Lots of copyright-protected content has been removed. Woebot’s Napster analogy is OTM, and Viacom’s description too (‘Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws.’). (And the silly home-made videos can be incorporated into almost any business model, so I wouldn’t put my bet on their saving YouTube’s bacon.)
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
Google bought YouTube so it could have access to the user data, who'd looked at what, as a matrix, and they wanted to merge that information with the data regarding your google searches and gmail use.

It's a huge amount of information that a lot of companies would pay millions and billions for...
 

sufi

lala
This is a nice and clear explanation of why G**gle should relinquish Youtube, and be split up
sad really that it falls to some random blogger to work all this out
 
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