WSJ: Google in talks to buy YouTube
By KEVIN DELANEY for the Wall Street Journal
October 6, 2006 12:11 p.m.
Google Inc. is in talks to acquire online video site YouTube Inc. for roughly $1.6 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The discussions are still at a sensitive stage and could well break off, this person says.
A spokeswoman for closely held YouTube could not be reached for comment. A Google spokesman said, "We don't comment on rumors and speculation." Rumors of such talks were reported earlier on the TechCrunch blog.
YouTube is a poster child for a new generation of startups, which is surging thanks to the growth in usage of the Internet and online advertising. Founded in February 2005 in a garage by three twentysomething alums of eBay Inc.'s PayPal electronic-payment unit, YouTube quickly built a huge consumer following for videos online.
Now users watch more that 100 million videos daily, and the site's market share tops that of similar services from the likes of Google, according to some research firms. In recent months, the company has tried to profit from its popularity by expanding the types of ads it sells to include videos on its home page and reaching out to media companies to defuse the threat of legal action against it.
Rumors circulated earlier this year that some major media companies expressed interest in buying closely-held YouTube. Chief Executive Chad Hurley said at the time that the company was not for sale and an IPO in the future was a possibility.
YouTube has stood out from the growing crop of online video services for its simplicity. YouTube serves up videos that generally can be viewed without users downloading special software. It also let consumers display its videos on other sites, such as blogs or personal pages on News Corp.'s popular MySpace social networking service.
Last month, the San Mateo, Calif., company announced a new system to give media companies more control over the video on the site and to address their fears that others will profit from consumers' piracy of their content. Warner Music Group is the first entertainment company to embrace the system. It will post its catalog of music videos on YouTube and collect an unspecified percentage of the revenue from advertising appearing alongside them. [link]
October 6, 2006 12:11 p.m.
Google Inc. is in talks to acquire online video site YouTube Inc. for roughly $1.6 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The discussions are still at a sensitive stage and could well break off, this person says.
A spokeswoman for closely held YouTube could not be reached for comment. A Google spokesman said, "We don't comment on rumors and speculation." Rumors of such talks were reported earlier on the TechCrunch blog.
YouTube is a poster child for a new generation of startups, which is surging thanks to the growth in usage of the Internet and online advertising. Founded in February 2005 in a garage by three twentysomething alums of eBay Inc.'s PayPal electronic-payment unit, YouTube quickly built a huge consumer following for videos online.
Now users watch more that 100 million videos daily, and the site's market share tops that of similar services from the likes of Google, according to some research firms. In recent months, the company has tried to profit from its popularity by expanding the types of ads it sells to include videos on its home page and reaching out to media companies to defuse the threat of legal action against it.
Rumors circulated earlier this year that some major media companies expressed interest in buying closely-held YouTube. Chief Executive Chad Hurley said at the time that the company was not for sale and an IPO in the future was a possibility.
YouTube has stood out from the growing crop of online video services for its simplicity. YouTube serves up videos that generally can be viewed without users downloading special software. It also let consumers display its videos on other sites, such as blogs or personal pages on News Corp.'s popular MySpace social networking service.
Last month, the San Mateo, Calif., company announced a new system to give media companies more control over the video on the site and to address their fears that others will profit from consumers' piracy of their content. Warner Music Group is the first entertainment company to embrace the system. It will post its catalog of music videos on YouTube and collect an unspecified percentage of the revenue from advertising appearing alongside them. [link]
12 Comments
James RoeI was just reading this. Hopefully if this goes through it will mean that youtube will become stable.
mlxAnd hopefully they'll keep it user-driven...
fireflyI saw this on Broadreports.com also. What will happen with video.google.com I wonder? Will they just combine the two? Drop it?
lucky760Will we someday see the headline WSJ: Google in talks to buy VideoSift? Google Inc. is in talks to acquire online video site VideoSift for roughly $1.6 billion...
Please don't pinch me.
That'd be something.
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
Wow, that would really change things if Google pulled this off. I'm kind of hoping they don't. I think the market is served better be a little diversification.
renIunno dag, i think it will be a good thing, because google has the funding and the professional clout to take on the "you stole my copyrighted material" crowd.
If there was any company that i would be ok with buying youtube out, it would be the googs.
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
I think Google is much stricter on the copyright stuff though, if you look at what's on Google Video compared to YouTube.
renyeah but, we have to accept that they will deal with this stuff eventually, its either youtube goes or it gets "adjusted" to avoid lawsuits.
What i would like to see is some law passed about allowing people using small sections of copyrighted material (30s - 1min) or perhaps trailing copyrighted material with the creators info and an ad for the creators owner (Universal, Warner etc) that way they get their precious recognition.
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
I don't think it's recognition they are after Ren - they want their precious cut of the loot.
KrupoI knew this conversation would appear when I saw the news on the elevator "headline news" screen.
For once, something interesting instead of the "Yahoo Web Report - search for pi at all time high." [shudder]
A reform of copyright law? Brilliant idea - if only you could get a few hundred thousand infulential people to get it to happen. Stupid political system - how long until a Sifter is in charge?
renlol, how bout cutting a 1 cent per view deal?
essentially, the big guys like Warner and Universal want their stuff to be watched, it's not like it will be gone for good if google buys out videosift, there will be a way that everyone can make their share of the cashola and the user still pay nothing except maybe some time in eyeballing some crappy ads about microsoft.
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
Some more interesting coverage of this over at TechCrunch "http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/06/wsj-reporting-on-google-youtube-talks-as-well/
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