I have no idea what $1.65 billion looks like, but YouTube‘s gonna find out with a ton of Google stock. Based on initial coverage, it appears Google Video and YouTube will maintain distinct identities… other than the inevitable AdWords wallpapering. This acquisition might be a good opportunity to clean up the clutter — let’s relocate user-submitted Google videos onto the YouTube platform and refocus Google Video as a purely pay service. Bloomberg reports YouTube serves up 100 million daily video clips to 34 million monthly visitors.
Google says: The acquisition combines one of the largest and fastest growing online video entertainment communities with Google’s expertise in organizing information and creating new models for advertising on the Internet. The combined companies will focus on providing a better, more comprehensive experience for users interested in uploading, watching and sharing videos, and will offer new opportunities for professional content owners to distribute their work to reach a vast new audience.
When the acquisition is complete, YouTube will retain its distinct brand identity, strengthening and complementing Googles own fast-growing video business. YouTube will continue to be based in San Bruno, CA, and all YouTube employees will remain with the company. With Googles technology, advertiser relationships and global reach, YouTube will continue to build on its success as one of the world’s most popular services for video entertainment.
On a related note, both Google and YouTube announced distribution deals with record labels and CBS earlier today.
This sounds like a good fit and good plan to divide the brands.
The content deals announced today were sweet too. Still alot of tire kicking, but some decent momentum.