What is Digg?Sponsored by HowLifeWorks
New Food Sprinkle Convinces the Brain to Stop Over-Eating view!
howlifeworks.com - How sophisticated scents are helping people control their appetite and lose weight
31 Comments
- lampshade, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17hehe on a funny, but unrelated note....
The google founders tried to sell their tech to Yahoo before creating the company Google themselves - MrSolutions, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14Yahoo did not really fail to act. they had a sniff and didn't like the price.
There are plenty of criticisms of about this being a bad purchase for Google...
YouTube has:
No Business Model
Huge Potential for Copyright Lawsuits.
Given that Google has a 5% stake in AOL/TimeWarner, competitors of AOL/TimeWarner who are content producers may feel threatened by this recent takeover and only get encouraged to sue YouTube.
And while all this has been going on most people have failed to notice Microsoft strengthening itself in the Online Video industry.... http://www.digg.com/tech_news/Microsoft_s_Answer_to_the_Google_YouTube_Deal_Its_own_Video_Search_Engine/who
But with Microsoft, Google and even AOL making headway in the Community Driven Sites and Online Video, Yahoo needs to get thinking if it wants to keep up. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9All except that A-Rod costs more. :)
/sarcasm - FishyJoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Maybe they learned their lesson from Flickr. Buying marketshare at any price does not necessarily lead to profitability.
- lane.montgomery, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5It seems like a logical falacy to say that Yahoo tried to buy YouTube BEFORE Google, and then state that it is proof that Yahoo is late and slow. It sounds more like Yahoo didn't think YouTube was worth what they wanted for it.
What I am more interested in is Google now starting to copy Yahoo's model for most acquisitions. Usually Google absorbs their acquisition into a Google branded project. Yahoo, on the other hand, lets the aquired team work mostly independently with direction from Yahoo corporate.
I am kind of curious if there are any other ideas on this. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4How did Yahoo get "lose out" again? They tried, they didn't want to pay over a billion dollars. The end.
- meehawl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Back in the 90s when Yahoo had as ridiculously over-inflated stock price as Google has now, it thought nothing of daft buy-outs, such as handing Cuban $4 billion, and other sillines like egroups and so on. It diluted its shares immensely. It seems cheap at the time but has a drag on future metrics.
Yahoo these days does due diligence more carefully than before and realised that YouTube was asking too much, especially considering its burn rate and impending demise. Yahoo already has a very diversified product portfolio - it didn't need to buy in some more eyeballs as badly as Google. Over the past couple of years, Google's share of absolute search has been declining and, because it has such a limited product spread, Google is desperate to stop others from bulking up their eyeball counts at Google's relative expense. Hence the defensive payouts to AOL, MySpace, and now YouTube. Good for short-term numbers, crappy for long-term. Unless Google has somehow managed to figure out how to contextually analyze video and sell context there (and if it has, that's a massive AI breakthrough), then it is going to be relying on user tagging and low-value blind CPM revenue. Not good. - ghouse, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Do you have any source for this assertion, or is it conventional wisdom?
- WoodenKimono, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I don't see how You tube will help Google, other than cost them a fortune in lawyer fees for copyright lawsuits. The only reason youtube wasn't sued is because they didn't have any money. That isn't the case with google.
- daonlyfreez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I guess Google and YouTube will settle on bulk content with the major digital media copyright holders, that will let them distribute relatively minor quality whatever video, may it be compositions, or direct rips, Funniest Home Video compilations, Daily Show fragments or even whole movies. They they'll ofcourse will try to sell as much good quality stuff (the stuff you'd like to see crisp on your verrrry big screen) to you. In the end that market is the only market the copyright holders will gain from anyway, the grey/black market is too costly to fight.
I think 'in the end' there will be three players on the internet content market, Google/YouTube (a major one, with it's massive library), Apple (with it's iPod dominance), and Skype/eBay/Yahoo (they can develop something similar together). Ofcourse Microsoft will dangle along, regardlessly. I do hope the copyrights owners will be wise enough to make it possible to add a free, relatively lower quality content to the offering. - FinishdLawSkool, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What's wrong with you?! The idiots at Yahoo have been working on that new Yahoo home page and trying as hard as possible to make it look like something from AOL - they do not have time for Google or You Tube...
- nocode, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1The Red Sox didn't balk on the deal. Bud Selig blocked the deal because they wanted to restructure ARod's contract, but I guess Selig didn't like it.
- Rethcir, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@Nocode
Actually, it was the Player's Union I believe that blocked the deal, since apparently it is illegal for players to GASP want to take less money to play for a certain team. - spuddy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0True, Launch and Geocities were integrated, but the majority of their recent history (flickr, del.icio.us, upcoming.org, etc) were largely left alone.
- thinkitcreative, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1It's fascinating how a business decision by Yahoo--and a good one at that--is being characterized as some kind of failure to act. What's clear is that they did act by sitting down with YouTube...it's just that they took a pass when they saw the absurd asking price. There's really no comparison here to the deal that went down for flickr, in which Yahoo bought not only a giant chunk of market share, a thriving community and in-house talent and technology...they also bought a company with a viable business model with revenues to show for their efforts. All for a widely rumoured tiny fraction of what was paid for YouTube.
Google gets credit for acting fast, but time will tell whether it was the right business decision for their bottom line. - slapjack, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Yep...Yahoo is SO slow.
I guess Flickr, del.icio.us and Konfabulator don't count. Color me confused.
This is just because the media feels the need to write about a $1.65 billion transaction and it's Google. I say MEH. - Screwy1138, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Huh, the a-rod comparison seems to be pretty accurate. But I have been known to be wrong so -shrug-
- mandarin, on 10/12/2007, -6/+4Their ads suck.
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -8/+6"YouTube has:
No Business Model
Huge Potential for Copyright Lawsuits."
Quite true. $1.5 billion is a rediculous price for a bussiness that actually makes money. It's just absurd to spend that much to purchase what amounts to a liability. But this is digg. If google does it, it must be a good idea.
I don't know about blinkx though -- a traffic rank of 9700 isn't much, compared to youtube's top 100 ranking.
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&compare_sites=&y=t&q=&size=medium&range=&url=blinkx.com - Branden, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Not always. Take a look at Launch.
- aspirinetu, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1...but then they said "nope, let's better buy an unknown video site"
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9003702 - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2Honestly, do we need any more Google/YouTube articles linked? Feels like I'm hitting the replay button on my Tivo.
- exobyte, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Sports references on digg? I never though I'd see the day.
About the billion > million, A-Rod got cash, youtube got stock. If you try to sell that much stock, the price will go down, and you also have to factor in google probably being overpriced (compare price to earnings for google and other tech stocks). - blueRAP, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2@merreborn
Blinkx will likely increase in traffic soon, but that's not the point. Microsoft will be implementing Blinkx technology to their own video search. This really could cut into YouTube's market share depending on how popular it gets. Microsoft may not have f'd up as usual on this move. - uhbeta, on 10/12/2007, -7/+31.65 billion < 255 million ?
- strictnein, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1@merreborn:
Learn to spell "ridiculous" and then maybe people will actually start to believe that you have a clue as to what you are talking about. - merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -10/+6I hope all my failures go on to become the most frequently visited site on the internet.
http://tinyurl.com/ms2ay - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1me too
- askjosh, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3Lampshade,
Now that is funny :-) I mean if they had purchased the tech way back then, they would be the best online search engine around. now they are only second best if that. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -10/+4yahoo fails at everything
- parislemon, on 10/12/2007, -15/+6Does this remind anyone else of when the Red Sox were about to get Arod and then balked, so the Yankees swooped in and got him?
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is