I can’t believe that MSN and Yahoo actually let Google buy YouTube. Google acquired the 18 month old startup for $1.6bn in stock - this reminds me of the dot com days.
It looks to me that Google is going on a rampage and the rest of the Titans are powerless to stop them (for whatever reason - politics, being bloated with too many decision makers, losing top execs). This latest acquisition firmly solidifies my belief that Web 2.0 is here to stay and the Nasdaq is on it’s way up. VC’s are pouring money into Web 2.0 companies and top execs are leaving their jobs for a piece of the action - I mean, seriously - making $1.6bn in 18 months is not exactly roughing it. This is not going to stop any time soon and given the exec drain that the titans are going to experience, the only way that they are going to keep ahead is by acquiring top companies and executive teams.
This acquisition is both the best and worst thing for the online industry - I fear for another dot bomb, but at the same time, I think there are a lot of really viable companies out there that will definitely make something happen out of the funding that VC’s are going to keep pouring into this sector. I think a lot of valuable lessons were learnt at the end of the last millenium so hopefully it’s not a mad gold rush this time, but more of a sustained path to great businesses being developed.
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I have to agree that medium and long-term though, online is still underhyped, scary as that is to say!
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Most interesting for me will be to monitor the relative successes of the (sure to be) different approaches to monetising the user-generated web that content-rich, protectionist NewCorp and content-free, openly syndicated Google will adopt. It’s highly likely that both will come up with successful strategies, but I’m betting that there are many web2.0 entrepreneurs out there who will be watching with interest. Personally I hope Google blows them to shreds!
Mark Cuban may be onto something (though I must admit to not believing this to be the case), but he’s also eating humble pie after brashly stating a couple of weeks ago that no one would touch YouTube. I think that people are too easily preoccupied with the potential for copyright infringement, when the real value of sites such as YouTube is the genuinely amateur fare that is available. An awful phonecam video that we posted on YouTube of the Jose Gonzalez’s gig at The Armchair has been viewed thousands of times in the last few months despite being one of hundreds of versions of the same track! The mind boggles.
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