It has been announced that Google just bought YouTube for a measly $1.65 billion. That’s not really that much money, right? 
There are several big questions that are in my mind now. The first being whether Google is going to keep the two services separate or not. In my opinion they should promote each individually just because of brand recognition. Despite the name Google being all over the place I think YouTube is synonymous with videos. Not only is it recognized all over the world but YouTube also has less syllables than Google Video…so it is easier to say. I know that isn’t very scientific but those are enough of a reason to keep them separate for me.
Apparently Yahoo! was also in the bidding but they were no match for Google’s checkbook. Does that mean all of Google’s competitors like MSN and Yahoo! are going to try and sweep up other online video services to gain some of the market share back? Probably but MSN hasn’t even opened their video service to the public yet so they are already way behind.
Despite Google recently saying that they weren’t going to develop any new services for a little while I guess that doesn’t exclude them from purchasing companies. 
Thanks for the tip Curtiss!
| Update: |
Here is Google’s official press release. Looks like they are keeping all of the YouTube employees and the two services will remain separate. Thanks for pointing that out Nate!
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So… what’s going to happen with Google Video?
I’m sure they will still keep them separate. There are somethings that people like about Google Video and somethings that people like about YouTube. When you search for videos on either site maybe it will give you the option to search both but they would be crazy to change any more than that.
“When the acquisition is complete, YouTube will retain its distinct brand identity”
From
google press
So they will keep them apart which is good. I bet most people wont even know what happened.
I have actually wanted Google to buy YouTube out for a couple reasons…
1. So that it stays up and running, Google can make the site profitable and afford the bandwidth, seeing as YouTube still hasn’t been profitable because of the huge bandwidth costs.
2. Because YouTube search, quite honestly, is the worst search engine I have ever used, and am hoping Google will solve this with their search engine implemented into YouTube (while still including/allowing tags as they are if people like that).
3. Also, so that they can avoid lawsuits that would inevitably shut them down, because of the extra cost, making it even more difficult to turn a profit. Because either the big corps who would sue YouTube, wouldn’t because they’d be going head to head with Google, and that’s never a good idea, and/or Google would sign deals to keep the site running the way it is now, without commercializing it like they did with some of Google Video.
Reminds me how pissed I still am that I never bought in at the $85 price when Google released their IPO, but couldn’t because I couldn’t get a loan from my family for the $10,000 minimum that I wanted to invest in Google (they didn’t believe me when I said they’d definitely multiply their initial payment 5 fold…then Google actually ended up peaking at something like over 6 times what their initial IPO cost)….I had the money, but was in one of my CDs (Certificate of Deposite), and wasn’t able to remove it prematurely, which I would have given custodianship to my family as my means of repayment for the loan. Thinking back on that….that money I would’ve made on Google stock…would have paid for my college education in full, and any other expenses for the next 4 years, on top of having plenty left over to save for my future.
Life sucks like that doesn’t it?
This means a drop in content, because the first thing Google will do is strip every piece of copyrighted content from that site.
Honestly I’d like to see the death of google video and full integration of youtube with my google account. I don’t seea reason why Google would keep redundant video services around for too long. Google didn’t make Writely “Google Word”, or make orkut “Google Connect”. I would assume they’ll move google content to YouTube and simply edit the usernames to include google accounts like blogger did.
@Curtiss
1)I was surprised that YouTube stayed afloat for as long as it did considering their bandwidth costs were reported to be more than $1 million a month. I hardly believe that they were covering all of their costs from the few advertisements that I was seeing.
2)The searching on YouTube is horrible. I think it would be cool if Google let you cross-search both sites at the same time. Maybe not by default but as an option.
3)Actually, now that you mention the whole legality thing I can’t believe there isn’t some foreign site that is focused on providing illegal TV shows and movies to users. What a money maker that could be if they force you to watch some sort of commercial before a video would start playing!
Yeah, you are talking about how you should have gotten into the stock when it was $85 instead of the $425 that it is at now…but in a few years you will probably be saying that I wish I got into the stock when it was still $425 instead of the $2500 that it is at now.
I should have sold my soul to invest in Google’s IPO. I’ll refer to the saying…Hindsight is 20/20!