Google Watch : Five Reasons Google Will Acquire YouTube (and 5 Reasons Google Won't)

Link: Google Watch : Five Reasons Google Will Acquire YouTube (and 5 Reasons Google Won't).

Five Reasons Google Will Acquire YouTube

1. YouTube has more traffic than Google Video and, what's more, represents the cultural zeitgeist in a way that Google does not. By acquiring YouTube, Google would be investing in the future of interactivity on the Web, and ensuring that the company has the inside track on video search trends.

2. Google can afford the bandwidth. YouTube's biggest expense is the bandwidth required to serve 100M videos per day. Ostensibly, Google could cover those costs while actually making the site browsing faster through Google's distributed architecture.

3. The advertising potential is enormous. Direct visits to YouTube are just one angle. If searches done through Google automatically lead to YouTube videos, that's another. What's more, YouTube, despite its immense cultural position, is still a small company with a small amount of revenue. The upside on the deal would be big for Google.

4. Google has experience dealing with copyright holder concerns. It is one of the few companies that could buy YouTube and manage the copyright concerns that large studios and networks have.

5. Google could integrate its social networking products and/or get the inside track on how a social network operates in a video-based site. Google is also heavily invested in mobile technologies -- I would expect to see YouTube functions integrated into handsets.

Comments

[Julien]

Dear Gerd,

I'd add just one reason ive talked about in my own music blog (in French though):
- Web2.0/UGC/Storage is a drastic cultural and philosophical change: until now, global / government institutions where making history, where storing everything, books, videos...
Now, memory of humanity is made by people like you and me... HOW COOL IS THAT?

=> Conclusion, i think that google also bought hard drives full of content, with rights on some of those video: The 1.65B$ may certainly include a bit of good content.

I may be wrong, but this huge amount of human memory is worth a bit of money.

All the best, and thank you for what you are writing.

J
http://www.themusiccrash.com