I’m troubled, but we will see.

Rooted in Democracy and everyone has a right to know?!
We shall see.

I’ve been struggling to make sense of the Google/YouTube merger that was announced earlier this week, mentioned here in this blog. I’m not seeing the point of it, and my concerns seem to be somewhat vindicated given how quickly legal action has been threatened against the newly acquired provider of loads of copyrighted and illegally shared media.

Then it occurred to me that perhaps this story isn’t about any of the potential technology or synergy or cultural issues that people are talking about. This story is about a shift in Google’s corporate culture.

Google has done quite a bit of innovative and interesting work. Their search is their bread and butter but they deserve to be respected for so much more. Gmail, Google Maps, Earth and News either redefined the playing field that they entered or opened up whole new arenas of competition.

And then there was Google Video. There’s nothing to love about Google Video. It works, but since it was late to the game and brought nothing really new or exciting to suggest it, nobody really got enthused about it. Google themselves never really seemed all that excited about Video - though Google is known for their spartan design aesthetic, they did an even worse job than usual slapping together the Video interface. And their commercial section has been a laughable competitor in the face of iTunes dominance.

Now, I understand that you don’t always hit the ball out of the park every time you come to the plate. But Google just gave up, didn’t even try to compete - this is why they bought YouTube. Google wants to be #1 in every area they engage, and they weren’t getting there with their homegrown Video. Rather than persist, build a better product, make innovations and compelling improvements, they went with the established player.

And payed $1.65 billion for it.

This is standard corporate behavior. Let somebody else take the risk and snap up whatever rises to the top. Google, in their ever so brief time on top, has already undergone the transformation from tech innovator to corporate leviathan.

That didn’t take long.

Edit: Here, as well, I’m duping what N already posted. I warned that I got all my material from N, but this is just silly.

Google buying YouTube makes no sense. Then again, they’re the gazillionnaires and I’m not - it’s quite possible that I’m missing something critical here. Still, I doubt it.

For those of you that missed it, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion. That’s a lot of money, but since YouTube has managed to remain on top of the video sharing pile even with some serious competition, the YouTube brand/feature set/whatever has become very valuable.

Exactly why YouTube is valuable, though, is a mystery to me. The RIAA, MPAA et al must be licking their chops right now, thinking of the huge amount of money they can sue Google for. YouTube didn’t used to be an attractive target for litigation because, frankly, there was little confidence that legal action would result in a payout.

Then there’s the fact that YouTube is a big time money pit. It is speculated that YouTube’s monthly loses on bandwidth alone now exceed several million dollars. YouTube employs 67 employees in a company that doesn’t have a clear business model. Advertisers are wary of signing with YouTube because they don’t want their brand to be associated with the vast amount of the (tasteless) content that exists on YouTube.

So YouTube is a liability legally and financially. What’s more, because of the reason stated above as well as by the nature of the content YouTube serves, there’s no clear way that YouTube’s acquisition will actually help Google in the only way that really matters - selling ads. Adwords is the big money-maker for Google - “Ads Everywhere” is just as appropriate a motto for the company as “Don’t be Evil.” How is acquiring YouTube going to help Google serve better, more targeted search results and ads to its users?

Could it possibly be that Google is simply buying YouTube in order to take a competitor to its own video service off the acquisition market, increasing the cost for any other potential buyers (Disney, News Corp., Yahoo) to develop rival services? If so, is video content on the Internet, in the manner delivered by YouTube, that intrinsically valuable?