DISQUS

Rockwell · 3 years ago

Zero insight whatsoever - I'm unclear as to why I subscribed to this feed in the first place. Inane post after inane post.

If you could articulate a clear, straightforward argument as to why YouTube was a good acquisition for Google at $1.65B, it could be worth reading. The whole "YouTube is a cool site - don't hate on it" argument is useless when it comes to valuation, etc.

Mathew Ingram · 3 years ago

Sorry to disappoint you, Randy. To tell you the truth, I'm unclear as to why you subscribed too. If it's not working for you, feel free to take your clicks elsewhere. I have a feeling we'll both be better off.

Rockwell · 3 years ago

I would be curious to hear how you would complete this sentence:

YouTube is a good acquisition at this price for Google because _____________.

or this one:

The copyright concerns surrounding the acquisition of YouTube are overblown because ____________.

And before you answer "because it's the top video site" or "it's the best distribution platform for advertising to come along since xyz"to question #1, the answer should be something that applies at a $1.65 billion valuation, and presumably not at a $1 trillion valuation.

I think there are good answers to these questions, but I'm not sure you've thought through them beyond "YouTube is a cool site".

And I love YouTube, by the way.

Mathew Ingram · 3 years ago

I'm not sure why you would expect me to respond at all after your original comment, Randy. And for what it's worth, I don't think much of your spam VoIP blog either.

I'd like to point out that I never said Mark Cuban was wrong because YouTube "is a cool site" or that people shouldn't "hate on it." If you read my previous posts, I think it's fairly obvious that I thought he was wrong to say that only a moron would buy it.

Does he have a point about copyright? Yes. But I think (or hope) that content owners might find a way to work with Google rather than fight it, and there are signs of content owners doing so, as I have mentioned in previous posts -- some of which may or may not be the "inane" ones you mentioned earlier.

Is it worth $1.6-billion? I haven't got a clue -- and I never claimed that was the right or wrong price for it, unless I missed something. You said there are good answers to your questions -- how about you provide a few?

Rockwell · 3 years ago

There were signs of copyright owners working with Napster too (another very cool service from a consumer's perspective) and we know where that went.

I simply don't see a way out on the copyright issue. Even if some major copyright holders cut deals with YouTube, the long tail of copyright holders is going to come out of the woodwork to sue them, particularly if they selectively remove some and not all copyrighted content with some sort of automated system. If they remove all copyrighted content, all you have left is lonelygirl15 and a bunch of bedroom video bloggers.

Or, Google has something up their sleeve that none of us know about.

God bless the YouTube guys - they have built an incredible service and were smart enough to get out while the getting's good.

Apologies for the first comment - all the Cuban bashing has been getting to me. :)

/pd · 3 years ago

nice civilzed conversations happening here .. no seriously.. two reasonably peeps having candid chatter ! :)-

it does not matter who --thinks what.

What matters is the landscape is changing and nowbody knows how the horizon will look.