There has been all kinds of buzz around the Internet in the last 24-hours regarding acquisition rumors that Google is going after YouTube for the sum of $1.6 billion. From the sounds of it there is much more than speculation involved but the discussions are still in the very early stages and could end at any time.
I think Google is one of the few companies that would be able to purchase YouTube simply because of the amount of bandwidth that is needed to keep it running. The last report that I heard was that YouTube was spending over $1 million each month just to meet the high bandwidth demand. Their growth is increasing so rapidly that not many companies would be able to meet the scalability needs but Google should already know how to handle it.
The primary question that I was asking myself was whether Google would keep the two video services separate or combine YouTube into Google Video. I would think that they would keep them separate just so YouTube users don’t get confused and leave, but I am sure that they would put Adsense on the page to help generate revenue. They may, however, allow users to cross-search both sites when they are performing a search to help increase the quality of the results that are returned.
This will be very interesting to watch and if Google doesn’t scoop up YouTube I wonder if anyone else is going to try and cough up the money to purchase them.
People talking about this: TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal, Digg, Googling Google, and many more on Technorati.
I hope it never happens for one reason.
No more competition.
If there was only “major” place to upload videos on the web there would be no need for competition between companys
e.g. new features would come less and less.
Well, Google would definitely blow Microsoft out of the water and I think that is what they are aiming for. Google has been good, especially lately, about updating services that they have already released. It would be nice to have some of the Google Video features, such as linking to the middle of a video, on YouTube so I could see several benefits from the acquisition.
I also think that MySpace will still be providing enough competition to keep them on their toes as well.
I’ve never used YouTube before, but think I need to investigate it.
I am sure that if Google buys it, they will do a good job with it.
Are you saying that you haven’t used YouTube in the sense of uploading videos or have you not even watched a video there? I haven’t tried to upload a video using Google in a little while because the first time I tried it said they had to approve it before it would post. I decided to go over to YouTube who made my video instantly available. I’m not sure if Google has changed their policy since then but I wasn’t too fond of it.
If Google buys YouTube, theres sort of no independence. Currently a lot of Google programs up on track. People may want somehting to resort too, other than a Google owned program. Google have purchased a few. I think YouTube should stay as it is. It’s much better than Google video. YouTube would just become one of those little icon things on the sponsoring pages, next to Google. And if Google doesn’t change their OWN video search, then YouTube’s popularity will decrease. And who wants to go on GooTube? Soon people will be viewing the videos and commenting from [freewebs.com]
…Can’t Google leave popular companies alone… 
…And really, who does wants to go on GooTube. Sounds retarded. 