Comments on: With YouTube, Google puts its competitors in a jam

Build off what they have, or buy a second-tier site? For Microsoft and Yahoo, there's no easy way to make the Internet video market a horse race.

[ancre007]

Ok, but do the economics justify the deal?

Its interesting that none of these tech analysts is commenting about how this acquisition creates concrete value for GOOG shareholders. Just look at this expression: "Now the value for every other video-sharing company is rising with the purchase of YouTube, said analysts." Its not VALUE that's rising - only PRICE is rising! Such comments show that these deals are being driven by speculation - not by economic fundamentals.

[vhannon]

According to Marketwatch

YouTube was #3 in most watched videos and unique visitors and Google was #10. With My Space and Yahoo fighting for first place...why would Yahoo need to acquire anything?

[lketchum12]

Microsoft is masterful

Oh my and no one yet recognizes how masterfully Google has been played...

I just about do not know where to begin, but here goes...

Google is about bringing people to other peoples' content - not owning content and certainly not about managing it.

YouTube has not yet turned a profit and on its own, likely never would. Google has a lot of strengths, but management isn't one of them - neither are controls. They are faced with a real challenge and must continue to add to the value of their stock and reward shareholders, of face their own internal dot.com bubble.

Inevitable copyright challenges aside, Google faces the single greatest threat to any social engineering enterprise - the people. YouTube tapped into a well known behavioral thread - people seeking to be unique, and expressive by being just like everyone else. It's a weird group, but one that is so very predictable - make anything mainstream and it loses its edge. Make it common and it loses its appeal.

YouTube became the ultimate aggregation of material, subject to contraints, that is already found on dozens of other sites - etensity, illwillpress, Linkswarm, and College Humor all come to mind. Yes, it added the ability for anyone to have a voice and a face, but that is a process that is already "no longer new" and subject as all things are, to competitive parity.

Microsoft's soapbox, yahoo's video offer the same, and many others coming online that offer specialization - twit TV, dl.tv, etc... each far better sites that Goog-Tube.

Google didn't need YouTube, but Microsoft sure needed Google to go after YouTube, and as many other distractions as possible - hence why soapbox was launched early in BETA to bait Google into the buy.

All the while, all those legitimate partnerships, amazing VC-1 HD tools and SoC technologies Microsoft and her partners have engineered are all coming together... all while Google musses about with YouTube and before one can say, "You What?" Microsoft will have put it all together within a vast ecosystem of superior and better fielded technologies.

With that said, I have to re-think what Bill Gates is retiring - I used to think it was to fulfill a promise he made to himself, but know I think he was simply bored with his competitors' idiocy - he grew weary of watching them fall into one trap after another - so easily.

You watch - give it ten years, Microsoft will emerge as a media house so large, it will make Sony look puny. In that age of Web 4.0, we'll all be asking, "hey, remember Google?" - "yeah, weren't they one of those search companies that tanked in the second dot.com bust?"

[dysonl]

Refreshing Opinion

I'm glad to hear such refreshing contrarian comments about this deal.

The fact that Google bought Youtube when they themselves already has a similar service (Google Video) makes me wonder: was that a desperate move?

[qwerty75]

You give MS far too much credit

They have nothing to compete over.

MS is a slow, calculating behemoth. There is no agility or innovation there whatsoever.

YouTube has mindshare. Similar to iTunes, but not in scope. MS will have to make a product so superior to iTunes to even make a tiny mark, something they have not done.

Anything MS produces to compete with YouTube will be be described as "like YouTube but ...".

As MS has proved time and again, quality does not float to the top. All that is required is massive marketing hype. YouTube has this, doubly so with Google taking over. Rightly or wrongly Google is still considered as an outsider by many. The corporatizing of YouTube by Google will have little to no effect.

If MS bought YouTube it would be its deathknell.

Google rarely reacts to what others might or might not do. This deal is just Google doing what it wants. The MS business model is all about reacting and following.

ANd no I am not a Google fan(nor a MS fan). I think Google is arrogant in its data collecting practices and there is a major potential danger in Google becoming more destructive to the industry the MS is.

[webwhiz]

was yahoo's lack in discipline: Google's advantage

Yahoo?s lack of initiative and management principle has definitely created another prominent gap behind Google in a constantly evolving internet advertising market. Yahoo?s most recent setback as in the recent YouTube scenario illustrates its instability in grasping an opportunity and closing a deal efficiently. Read my article at your own interest to see how:
http://www.askdrweb.com/2006/11/12/yahoo%e2%80%99s-lack-in-initiative-and-management-discipline-google%e2%80%99s-advantage/