For Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, the big money has just come in. Although they are the creators of one of the most popular websites in the world, YouTube.com, you've probably never heard of them, and never will again. What does it take to buy such an established website? Google found the price to be about $1.65 billion. That's right, YouTube has been officially bought and paid for by Google.
One might say: "Who cares?" This bit of information is small, but yet the consequences could be dire.
Think about it. Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, etc. were all established prior to Google's creation, yet all of them seem out-of-date because of Google's grubby fingers. Quickly becoming the top search engine on the internet, Google has used its prosperity to reach out into other areas. Now Google provides an ever-growing cache of resources to the public, ranging from maps of anywhere on Earth to spreadsheets to e-mail to weather forecasts. Yes, they've even had videos for some time now.
So what does it mean that Google has purchased YouTube? Control could be a valid answer. Where did you turn for videos before? Either Google Video or YouTube, right? It seems to me like someone might have gotten jealous they weren't the most popular for something. What's next? Buying MySpace or other blogging websites? Possibly other websites. Who's to say where this madness ends and we won't end up with Google everywhere you look on-line? Sure, there are barriers in place to stop monopolies with corporations, but how does that stack up in cyberspace?
I've heard. :(
Eventually there will be a Google-Youtube-Myspace-Photobuckets-Wikipedia-Livejournal chain. Those are the sites I use regularly anyway.
Imagine they try to buy this blogging site too!!!
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I never let my schooling interfere with my education. - Mark Twain
It's hard to regulate the internet -- afterall, many Y and X generation are rallying for an unregulated internet, while the current igeneration is crying over someone who wrote something on myspace, about something one of their friends, wrote on Xanga, who they originally told to someone through aol instant messenger.
As far as I know, business can have as many domains as they want. And if you do control, where does control of business interfere with start-up internet companies hitting it big?
It's a hard one to decide. We'll wait and see what google has in store for YouTube -- as long as no permanent advertising or costs aren't involved, I can't see the web public feeling the transaction too unjust.