I agree about MySpace being an instant turn-off and visual junk. Some of my 'friends' seem to really like me , but I've just been ignoring the whole, nasty place.
Sounds crazy to me like the old dot.com bubble, huge over inflated valuations, sellers seem to battle selling sites for 12x their revenue in these forums so 1.6 Billion must be about 1200000X uTube's current revenue
Last time I heard YT was loosing money like the US government's deficit. Bandwidth bills were rising skyhigh. So the valuation multiple was actually a negative one.
Maybe 12 times the potential revenue. Imagine how much youtube would make if the bandwidth costs disappeared (which they would with Googles server resources). Also if all the revenue from the ads went to google without giving some to youtube they would double the revenue straight away.
Google also owns a lot of fibre so they don't have to lease bandwidth. And with owning Blogger they probably have smoe advanced anti-comment spam algos available - that's been YT's biggest problem (after bandwidth). They'd have a massive market share - the smaller Video sites won't be very happy me thinks, if they pull this off indeed. But it's still a big nightmare they'd be buying so I'm not sure they'll actually buy it.
Just a few weeks ago YouTube's copyright woes were practicaly eliminated. Warner Music gave them license to braodcast any of their music and videos. The liscense is extended to YouTube users who wish to use the copyrighted works to create their own movies, sampling music or vid clips from Warners stuff. Warner is uploading its entire cataloge of videos. For this Warner takes a small cut in YouTubes revenues. Universal was threatening to sue for a long time now but changed their tune and are following Warners lead. Days after the Warner deal, Cingular cell anounced its spoonsorship of the YouTube battle of the bands. A competition where amature musicians submit their music videos and YouTuber's vote. Winners get record deals 'n stuff. Other big advertisers are beginning to line up at YouTubes door to get their ads in front of those millions of viewers. YouTube traffic is gold compared to MySpace. Who wants to market to 14 year olds when you can reach 20 to 35 year olds? This came in the nick of time for YouTube. They've burned through 11 million in VC capital with very little revenue coming in. All the big advertisers were affraid to get pulled into the dark cloud of lawsuits that were hovering over YouTube. Now is a perfect time for Google to buy. And why do they want it when they already have Google Video? Because if they dont someone else will. YouTube is funded by venture capital money, so their intention all along has been to sell and, now that the lawsuit issues appear to be at bay, their valuation has skyrocketed. Now is the time to sell. YouTube has 50% of the entire US video website market. It is simply "THE" brand. Google video on its own could never attain that. Good luck Murdoch. Why wouldn't Google want it?
The same VC's who invested in Google are behind YouTube's financing so you would think that would help the deal too, if they have a good relationship still.
Geocities was the leader of its time though. They didn't even try to keep up though. It seems like even 10 years later, they've refused to adapt.
^^ not funny Anyway, looks like the deal will go through and google will go up and add another 10 billion of market cap So easy to make moeny with google stock. I've been a shareholdfer for over a year and have made a small fortune. Trying to free up more funds to buy more google stock since it will got to $3000 a share soon. I figure that before google decides to reprocess 95% of humanity deemed 'unfit for type 1 civilization' into little more than cat chow or matrix batteries, I should make some easy money and stock up on some firearms cause im not going to let them turn me into cat chow or a battery.
The deal will more than likely go thru. After doing some searches and reading a few articles I’m starting to think this is a very good thing for Google and for Youtube. I think that YouTube doesn’t have any option in the matter, it must sell or die. If anyone is interested on my blog I’ve listed the positive and negative aspects that I found.
Ah just saw the news on CNN Google is buying the YouTube for 1.65 Billion $ in stock. damn 1.65 billion http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061009/ap_on_bi_ge/google_youtube http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/biztech/10/09/google.youtube.ap/index.html