GoogleTube
By Rob Safuto on Oct 9, 2006 in Acquisitions, Social Media, Video Blogging | Tags: Acquisition , Google , Google-Video , GoogleTube , Video Blogging , You-Tube
The Associated Press is reporting the Google has bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock.
I almost can’t believe this because it seems like YouTube is very vulnerable to lawsuits from the many copyright holders who are being infringed upon as a result of videos hosted on YouTube.
The linked story contains the following quote: “We are natural partners to offer a compelling media entertainment service to users, content owners and advertisers,” said Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive officer.
How this deal will affect social media depends highly on how Google uses their new brand. Will Google swallow up YouTube into Google Video? Will both brands remain independent? Or will Google merge the technologies of both under a single YouTube banner? When Google gets tough on copyrighted content will users shift to MySpace videos?
My two cents are that they should merge the technologies, integrating the best features of both under a single site. This makes things less confusing for media publishers who struggle with the time consuming task of maintaining a profile on both sites.
[tags]Social Media, Video Blogging, Google Video, You Tube, GoogleTube, Google, Acquisition[/tags]
