Google buys YouTube for 1.65 Billion

YouTube has lately been hinting at its own sale, suggesting a price around 1.5 billion dollars.  Commentators have scoffed at this, pointing to the danger of competition from Google, Microsoft and others. The danger of legal action over intellectual property violations lingering throughout YouTube content added to the doubts, including mine.

Today Google agreed to buy YouTube for 1.65 billion dollars.

YouTube had nothing to offer Google in terms of technology or business models. Google simply bought a brand name and an audience—and a potentially fickle and transient one at that.

There is a nice human side to this story, if you tend to root for the underdog:

YouTube is a wee baby of a company, founded in February 2005  by three very young men: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim (who departed earlier to pursue a degree— whoops!). After much searching YouTube later secured capital from an investment company, Sequoia Capital, to cover staffing and equipment; only 11.5 million dollars carrying them all the way to today’s agreement.  

The founders’ excitement over the incredible windfall is infectiously evident in the video they posted to their site: http://youtube.com/watch?v=QCVxQ_3Ejkg 

I’ve been predicting a slow death for YouTube. Nestled within Google’s arms, it is hard to imagine it failing any time soon! 

Comments

[jack liu]

this once again the internet power but intangible...
i think that is a risky buying...youtube...
there are too many problem about IP...law..privacy..
if some ad agency or film company take some action to against it....that will be disaster...

[Ken Thomas]

You are right, and Google is already working on that problem; they have already removed thousands of videos at the request of the creators or owners. MTV, Warner Brothers and others have had lots of items pulled down by Google since the sale of YouTube.
Perhaps a bigger worry for Google is recent news about Microsoft getting into online video, with plans to integrate it into the functionalityy of the Xbox 360.