Update: The NYTimes is now reporting that according to people involved in the talks, Google and YouTube will have separate board meetings today to approve a deal between them and could announce an acquisition after trading ends.
Acquisition was not yet among this morning’s early announcements, but several more content deals were unveiled today between Google, YouTube and big content publishers. Warner Music and Sony BMG will allow Google to play music videos and various value added content like artist interviews. According to the Financial Times, Google also said that “it would develop technology that would enable users to include certain content in videos that they create and upload to Google Video.” That sounds a lot like the copyright detecting technology YouTube touted when it signed its own deal with Warner last month. The FT reported that there would be both ad supported free content provided in the deal as well as downloads priced at $1.99. So far this morning free videos from Madonna, Justin Timberlake, Panic! At the Disco, John Mayer and Green Day are highlighted on the front page of Google Video. Don’t rush over all at once, please.
Meanwhile, YouTube announced deals this morning with CBS, Vivendi’s Universal Music Group and Sony BMG. CBS will populate a branded channel on YouTube with clips from Survivor, previews of upcoming shows and other content. Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG announced deals almost identical to the Warner deal last month and today with Google; featured content and permission for users to reuse content in the context of automated copyright detection.
What does it all mean? Unless copyrighted content detection just happened to be announced by Google at the same time a possible acquisition of YouTube and their technology was under discussion – that alone may rightly add more fuel to the fire. I was wondering last night whether this was in part a technology acquisition by Google and not just aimed at pulling in the community of users. It’s also entirely possible that Google has built its own copyrighted content detection technology. We covered a startup, Guba, that announced its own in July.
No matter what it says about a possible acquisition, today’s early announcements are a sign that YouTube and its deal with Warner were both important trail blazers for things to come.
Nice covering media news, but look rather the technology behind.
For me today hottest Google interpretation is The Information Factories by George Gilder about petabyte cloud computing effort of theG-men.
http://href.hu/x/1tgk
so, cause of the hype i took a look at goole vide, and it seems better than youTube’s. It has way more content on iraq than youTube; and has whole shows.
I think the copyright detectionis a made up excuss for google to buy youTube…
it will probably end-up like the AOL/Time-Warner thing…except in this case, its basically a merge.
Why on Earth would YouTube and Google sign separate deals on the same day that they could potentially be addressing a Google-YouTube acquisition?!? Doesn’t that put the side-deal recipients at an awkward position?
If there is to be an acquisition, CBS and Warner would have to retract some documentation of their deal with YT and tailor it towards Google’s T’s & C’s. Dealing with Google, a publicly traded company is quite a bit different from dealing with private company, YouTube.
I think you guys are chasing the wrong story. It was just announced that “YouTube Inc. struck deals with CBS and two major music labels Monday as the popular video-sharing Web site races to befriend content providers and avoid copyright-infringement lawsuits.”
http://msnbc.ms...om/id/15196228/
Edgar Bronfman Jr. (CEO, Warner Music) will be in the history book for recognizing the YouTube revolution and buying his ticket to join in.
Here is another way to look at this historical development of record companies allowing YouTube users to put their music in the user-generated videos — this will put the “amateur” video makers on an equal footing with the highly-paid music video directors, because the “pros” now have to compete for the eyeballs of YouTube users.
Imagine this scenario: a Britney Spears music video with a 7-figure budget and boasting Paula Abdul as the dance choreographer will have to compete with a video made by a 14-year-old Britney Spears fan who films herself jumping up and down to a Spears tune with a $19 webcam.
It’s an interesting deal, but even then will only allow users access to a limited portion of online videos. This is not the Google’s typical model.
Content Detection is THE key for this deal… Google’s own content detection alogorithms (CDA?) weren’t making the grade.
http://blogdawg...-googleyoutube/
The YouTube/Warner deal was the tipping of the hand that made courting YouTube the thing to do.
If this deal goes through what does this mean for LimeLight Networks? ASAIK, LimeLight provides the bandwidth for YouTube and I can’t imagine Google paying someone else for bandwidth and edge servers?
I have 2 domain names. I am very interested in Web2.0 and also have some ideas, but I could not find partners and investment. I don’t have any computer technolgy and development experience. I studied Enconomy in my University.
My domain names are:
video.sh
mtv.sh
.sh can be recognized as Share or Shopping. So video.sh can be developed as a Video Share or Video Shopping site. So does to MTV.sh
The domain names can be also negotiated for sale if somebody is really interested in them.
My MSN is p6 at live dot com
There are so many what if’s here, but you guys are doing an awesome job tracking it all. I imagine that it’s difficult to parse out facts from fluff. Thank you for keeping up on it.
HAHA, VeryFine’s comment made me laugh. Way to spam this blog buddy. And MTV.sh, wow, I’m sure someone would pay you $ to buy a domain that they can’t really use because of trademark issues.
Burn in hell punk!!!
1.6 billion for copyright (checksum or hash) function seems a bit much.
but hell, we’ve all seen stupidier deals before.
otherwise, if i was google, i’d just say, “hey, you’re not making a profit, tons of questions, 1.6 seems a bit high.”
we’re talking 1.6 BILLION for a company that doesn’t do anything special other than make it easier for you to upload your video…which i would think could be copied; especially by a google engineer, in a matter of months.
I really think google is like, “hey we wanna be the number one traffic site, we wanna be cool….we’re more than just SEARCH!!!!”
from everything i’ve read, youtube is burning 1-2 mill a month. they have less than 15mill VC funding. their staff is about 60 people crammed into a tiny office and they share 6 phones.
why on earth is google bailing them out with a 1.6 billion payday? give youtube another 6 months and they will run out of money. this is like yahoo buying cuban’s broadcast.com for 4 billion cause of the potential.
WHERE IS THE BUSINESS MODEL? HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE GOOGLE TO RECOUP 1.6 BILLION IN PROFIT FROM YOUTUBE?
those are the questions that need answers…not, “woohoo another startup is being bought out.”
^ agreeing with #13WormInBuffet
Maybe google will zone out youtube and redirect the users to the google video site?
Stop thinking about the deal and make money out of the fact that it may be official after the close today.
http://www.inthemoney.ca
I have a feeling the copyright detection is using Shazam..
http://www.shazam.com/
the tell you what song is playing by dialing 2570 on your phone and holding it to the speaker. in the UK at least
You’re right Mark. The question is do you think the money will be made on the long side or the short side? Long-term, I’ve always felt that Google is a short, and that was before YouTube. Google has been a one-trick pony and is almost completely dependent on a single revenue stream for the majority of its revenue. That’s a major flaw, especially when there are a lot of risk factors (ad spending slowdown due to recession, click fraud, etc.).
WormInBuffet’s post is spot on. There are a lot of similarities between this deal and broadcast.com. This valuation is based upon pure “potential” and not any metric that makes real sense. Maybe YouTube will realize that potential, but it’s definitely not a sure bet.
The flurry of licensing deals today is interesting, but I don’t think they’re too significant yet. These deals have been done with other online video players and from what I’ve seen, revenues generated for the majors from these deals is fairly insignificant. Obviously YouTube has one of the biggest audiences, but it’s far from proven that YouTube will be able to effectively monetize. Most major acquisitions (especially in the technology space) have ended up destorying shareholder value so it will be interesting to see how Google transitions this. And of course, I still think it’s likely that somebody out there will see Google’s deep pockets and try to sue.
Overall, I’d say it’s a negative for Google shareholders in the immediate term, even though it might work out long-term. There are lots of risks and challenges and the valuation being given to a company that is in a weak position and only 19 months old shows that Google is desperate to achieve success in other areas now that it has proven itself to be woefully incapable of leveraging its dominate position in search, supposedly talented management and employee base and huge cashpile to build additional successful products on its own. YouTube and the acquisition price aside, I think this says a lot about Google as an organization. It has become Microsoft, Yahoo, etc.
Its done..the deal has just been announced!
It’s official: http://investor...om/webcast.html
Google buys YouTube for 1.6Billion….
My gut is that within 30 days google will offer self-service video advertising on their adwords platform using its newly acquired distribution network. You will soon see an ad-clip infront of all videos.
Just my opinion.
Not to mention google has massive bandwidth/hardware resources that will probably reduce the tech overhead greatly.
Congrats to the VCs/Partners who gambleded a little and gained a lot in this little project.
Dot Bomb 2.0 anyone?
Please join us in the collaboratively filtered realtime discussion:
TOPIC: google youtube
START TIME:
2006-10-10 , 00:00 CEST (Brussels, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Stockholm).
2006-09-10 , 23:00 BST (London, Dublin, Lisbon).
2006-09-10 , 18:00 EDT (New York, Detroit, Toronto, Montreal).
2006-09-10 , 15:00 PDT (Vancouver, Los Angeles, Tijuana, Yukon).
TO JOIN:
go to the following url:
https://www.syn...n/googleyoutube
Confirm [yes] to the security warning and follow the instructions.
(In some companies a proxy login dialog box will appear. You then need to type your company internet username and password).
YOU NEED:
A Java plugin installed on your browser.
I have an idea for a new spinoff website: googletobuyyoutubecrunch.com
Hello world
Hello world
Nice idea with this site its better than most of the rubbish I come across.
luogo fine, sapete..
Luogo grande! Grande giusto! I miei riguardi migliori al proprietario:)
um… buoni, realmente buoni luogo e molto utile;)
Ich besichtige deinen Aufstellungsort wieder bald fur sicheres!
Great site! Good luck to it’s owner!
Stupore! ho una sensibilit molto buona circa il vostro luogo!!!!
Interessare, molto interessante. Come avete fatto questo?
Ich fand gute und wichtige Informationen – dir zu danken.
Du musst ein Fachmann sein – wirklich guter Aufstellungsort, den du hast!
pagine piuttosto informative, piacevoli =)
People will be excited to use Blue Mars for music, a place for self-expression and community. ,