Still shocks me, but the Google purchase of YouTube is official. PaidContent has more details.
And The Deal Is Done
Monday, October 9th, 2006GooTube Looking More Likely
Monday, October 9th, 2006Apparently Google is ignoring my advice and has continued with their quest to purchase YouTube.
Also, Techcrunch points out that there could be copyright technology involved that could help the fight against being sued left and right. Both Google and YouTube are putting together deals with many of the major studios and music companies which could also help protect them, but I still think there could be significant legal hurdles in the future.
It may be a big blow to large competitors of Google as they’ll have a pretty big hold of the video space with YouTube and Google Video combined.
Another interesting note is that the NY Times post mentions that Google sped up the pace of negotiation after Techcrunch initiall announced the rumors.
Does Google and YouTube Make Sense?
Friday, October 6th, 2006Techcrunch and the Wall St. Journal are both talking about a potential Google acquisition of YouTube for 1.6 billion. Before I comment further on this, let’s review a few things:
1. YouTube has been reportedly losing money due to bandwidth costs.
2. Much of YouTube’s use is driven by content it doesn’t own, and could potentially (and probably will be) sued for.
3. Much of it’s traffic and usage is driven by a competitor (Myspace) that could at any time block YouTube videos from being posted on its site, and people from Fox have made comments about making Myspace less of an enabler for other companies. That’d be a mistake on Myspace’s part in my opinion, but it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t badly hurt YouTube if they did it.
4. Google already has a competing service in Google Video.
5. Google normally buys small companies for their technology, not large established ones for insane amounts of cash.
Does that equal a 1.6 billion purchase?
However, of the likely companies to buy YouTube, Google would be able to handle the bandwidth costs and the possible legal issues the best as they are experts in both areas. They also have spent a lot of money on properties like AOL and Fox Interactive in order to secure advertising rights. This could be a similar move to assure that they get a lot of ad placement on YouTube, and it could possibly push them farther with video advertising.
I think the bottom line is that it would shock me if Google did this. The price is very high, and it just doesn’t seem like a Google type of deal.
Yahoo Video Jumps and Cuts
Wednesday, September 27th, 2006Jumpcut, a multimedia upload/share/edit/mashup site that launched about six months ago, has announced they’ve been acquired by Yahoo on their blog, and the Yahoo Search blog has confirmed it. No terms have the deal have been reported.
Along the lines of Sony acquiring Grouper a few weeks back, this appears to be an acquisition for the people/technology opposed to buying a site with a large and established user base.
Early theories are that Jumpcut technology could be integrated with Yahoo Video, as well as other Yahoo-owned properties like Flickr and Upcoming.org.
Even though it seems pretty clear Yahoo will want to use Jumpcut’s technology, it’ll be interesting to see if Jumpcut remains a standalone site. I imagine it will because Yahoo has left it’s previous acquisitions in the social media space relatively untouched, and as delicious recently announced their growth since being acquired by Yahoo has been tremendous.
Facebook and YouTube Want Top Dollar
Thursday, September 21st, 2006New rumors/reports are out that Facebook is talking to Yahoo along the lines of a $1 billion acquisition, and that YouTube is only for sale if you’re talking about buying them for $1.5 billion.
I guess there is really power in eyeballs again as both sites don’t have much in the way of unique technology, just a whole lot of eyeballs using their services. One side of me says they’re worth it as it looks like News Corp got a bargain in buying Myspace for $580 million.
However, the other side of me would be very scared about spending that much money on either company. Facebook has a strong grip on the college market, but there isn’t much of a defensible moat to their business. College students are fickle and if Facebook becomes uncool, that uncoolness can spread just as fast as their coolness did in the first place. Also, if they piss off their audience like they did recently by changing the way users can see information, they could see large groups of users leaving. There are also some interesting stories about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and how he has been handling the talks as highlighted in this Techcrunch post, it sounds like he might be a little full of himself and Facebook’s place in the world.
YouTube also has problems in not having much of a defensible moat, and they also face some serious problems with copyright that could be a big legal mess for whoever would acquire them. Imagine if someone had spent $1 billion to buy Napster a few years back, how would that investment look now?
It used to be that to be acquired for numbers like this you’d need to have world-beating technology. Do Facebook and YouTube really have something here that can’t be ripped away from them quickly? I’m not so sure.
Revisiting Top 10 Web Predictions of 2006
Sunday, September 10th, 2006As 2006 began I made a set of predictions for what I thought would happen related to web applications, comipanies, and “Web 2.0”.
We’re two-thirds through 2006, so I figured it was a good time to revisit how many of them have come true, and if any are still likely to occur in the rest of 2006.
1. RSS will become two-way with the help of 175.entry”>Simple Sharing Extensions.
Hmm, well, this is slowly improving, but I don’t think I really nailed this one. Hopefully we’ll see more of this in the future but the buzz around it seems to have died down or just moved behind the scenes.
2. Social news site Digg will expand into other content areas and media types and then will be acquired.
I was half right on this one. Digg did indeed expand into other content areas and media types, but no acquisition has occurred. Will that still happen? There hasn’t been any buzz around it lately, and Digg has gone through some recent problems as bloggers have noticed that Digg might not be as democratic as we thought, and they’ve lost some top users to Netscape’s offer to pay top social news finders.
Digg also faces competition from other social news services like Reddit, Newsvine, and Netscape, and while none of them has gotten to Digg’s level, it’s still early in the social news race. There are also numerous sites launching all the time which work just like Digg but are focused on specific verticals. It may be that what they’re doing isn’t unique enough now to really warrant someone wanting to acquire them that badly.
3. Web 2.0 will be looked down upon as a buzzword, and it’s usage will drop off dramatically.
This has definitely occurred, and more people seem to be moving past the term into just accepting things as new web applications. We’re also hearing “social web” or “social media” for a lot of Web 2.0 applications.
4. Face-recognition photo application Riya will be acquired by a major player.
Oops, didn’t happen yet either. Riya switched up their model a bit and are taking on an even bigger challenge of web image search with their facial recognition technology being a big part of that mix. I’d say at this point an acquisition in 2006 is unlikely, but I wouldn’t rule it out in the long term.
5. Some ecommerce shopping applications using the more recent advancements in social web technologies will be developed and will succeed.
Web shopping seems to move a little slower than other applications, but we have seen some cool new shopping applications. Jellyfish probably has made the most noise this year with their Value Per Action advertising model, but taking a look at this Alexa graph it doesn’t look they’ve had much traffic uptake from consumers. Of course, don’t always trust Alexa, I think Jellyfish is compelling although not revolutionary, but has a long way to go before it’s a major player. 
6. Google Analytics will again drop the hammer on the web analytics industry.
Another one I missed, there hasn’t been much out of Google Analytics besides finally opening up to the public. Google may be spread too thin in this case, or maybe they have no new analytics ideas, but they haven’t done anything special with it since launching it.
7. A forward thinking company will build technology to support transparency, efficiency, and relationships in the online advertising business.
Hey, what do you know, Right Media is doing this. Okay, I’ll admit this was a loaded prediction when I knew it was happening. Still, I think we’ve made great progress in 2006 thus far, and the rest of the year and 2007 could be really special.
8. Microsoft will launch a contextual advertising network that will either be huge, or fail miserably.
They have started issuing beta invites for advertisers to particiate in their content ad network. So we don’t really know yet if it will be a success or not. There hasn’t even been much detail yet on what the service will consist of, but if Adcenter is any indication it could have some interesting features, but be very IE-specific and bug heavy.
9. Two to three new startups will be so cool and successful they will make the heroes of 2005 like Flickr and del.icio.us seem small and insignificant.
I think YouTube makes a strong case for this being a correct prediction, and Digg has also been pretty cool and successful, although neither of them have been acquired like Flickr or Delicious. Of course, let’s recall that those two were not acquired for huge amounts of money though.
10. The venture capital investments and acquisition bubble will heat up even more, then deflate in the 2nd half of 2006 after a number of companies fail..
It seems as if things have cooled a bit in the 2nd half of 2006. Rojo was recently acquired by Six Apart, and there have been some recent venture capital investments but nothing too crazy.
Overall
Not bad, but I think I can do better with future predictions. I think I’m just early on a few of them, and maybe flat out wrong on one or two.
Vendare Media and Netblue to Merge
Tuesday, June 13th, 2006Jay Weintraub beat the press release by pointing out that Vendare Media and Netblue will merge.
Vendare does a little of everything with their display ad network, email marketing, search marketing, co-registration, and more. Netblue is more of a high-volume direct marketer, so it should be an interesting merger. They’ll probably cover more ground, and from my distant view there does seem to be some good strengths they can use together.
If it helps publishers and advertisers, it’ll be a good thing. Congrats to the two companies.
Google Buys Writely: Here Comes an Office Suite
Friday, March 10th, 2006Google bought Writely. Nobody is that surprised, and it makes it clear Google is taking Microsoft on head on in the office application world but will of course do it on the web instead. It will be a fun battle to watch, and I’ll be glad to see some competition in that space.
The next question is if Google will build the other common office applications like spreadsheets and presentations, or if they’ll snap up some other companies.
