Google in Talks to Buy YouTube

tessaiga writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is in talks to buy YouTube for about $1.6 billion. YouTube users watch more that 100 million videos daily, and the site's market share tops that of similar services offered by Google and other popular Web sites. This comes after a story earlier this morning that co-founder Sergey Brin is pushing for Google to cut back on the volume of products being offered, complaining that 'I was getting lost in the sheer volume of the products we were releasing'. Guess Google Video is one of the products making the approved shortlist."

compared to myspace

[krotkruton]

IMO, this offer really seems to add credibility to the "myspace sale was a scam" [slashdot.org] theory.

Isn't it up to the programmers?

[ClosedSource]

"cut back on the volume of products being offered"

Didn't we learn last week that you can work on anything you want at Google?

Re:I don't understand why they need to.

[TrippTDF]

I just made this sam argument to a co-worker. If google buys them, they keep the name and start dumping the copy-protected matierial. They can keep the "trusted" brand and then use it to push TV/Movies that you can buy... Apple has iPod/iTunes, MS has Zune/WMP, and Google needs something if they want to compete here.

My money has Google and MS getting slaughtered by Apple here.

Re:But they couldn't solve our puzzles!

[SilentChris]

YouTube is another one of those oddities. Like MySpace. Or VHS even. None of them are best in class, but they achieved a critical mass and took it from there.

Stuff I hate about YouTube:

1.) Takes forever to load some videos. Google Video is lightening fast.
2.) Can't really shift to a point on the timeline. Unlike Google Video, it can't seem to pick up midstream. What's the point of even giving the user the option to move the timeline if you can't stream from that point?
3.) Sometimes you leave comments and they aren't saved.
4.) Regardless if the comments save or not, the page will completely refresh restarting the video. (No problem, you think -- I'll just fast forward to where I was. Wait, can't do that).
5.) Sometimes pages flat out won't load. View the historic pages for stuff like "most popular video" and you'll sometimes see this.

Not to mention the UI guys look like they threw up all over the screen, and the general content (like Google Video) is lacking. If you see one dumbass 14-year old kick someone in the crotch, you've seen them all. (On a sidenote, who are these teenagers that have all day to kick people in their crotch).

I'm hoping one of these days people will realize, just like Tamagotchies, pet rocks and the Tubthumping song, that the only reason sites like YouTube and MySpace prevade culture are because they're popular. It has nothing to do with great content or inherently good design. All you need nowadays apparently is crap code and a userbase willing to kick people in the crotch.

Google and Branding

[StreetStealth]

Google hasn't really promoted the brand of any previous acquisitions, such as Writely... Seems to me they've mostly just ditched an acquisition's brand name and assimilated its tech.

This then poses an interesting brand question: YouTube has, oh, about 10^4 times more brand equity than anything else Google has snapped up before, so how would we see this branded? Google YouTube? Google Video Powered by YouTube? YouTube powered by Google?

Copyright

[Arwing]

Well a few things here
1. Google is buying out their biggest rival in google video, by adding the huge library and viwership, google video will be the place to go for anything related to videos online and give the already high traffic on google related services a boost

2. But it still doesn't solve the copyright problems google is going to face with RIAA and MPAA

3. This tatic (buying out competitor) sounds a lot like something MS would do, is this a sign that google is finally in a stage of major corporation like MS?

Re:But they couldn't solve our puzzles!

[faqmaster]

YouTube is the Paris Hilton of the Web 2.0 crowd.

Re:But they couldn't solve our puzzles!

[HishamMuhammad]

Actually, I think what's key in YouTube's early success over Google Video was that they required an older version of Flash, reaching a larger userbase. I remember not being able to open videos in Google Video but succeeding with YouTube, using some version of Konqueror. I assume the same applies to people running older browsers (say, IE5 on Win98), etc. The interface for comments might be quirky, etc (though it has improved recently), but they always excelled at compatibility for their videos -- and the streaming (at least from my end of the internet) was better.