Monday, October 09, 2006

Huh?!? Google to Buy YouTube for $1.7B


This makes no sense.

I like YouTube. I could spend hours on it watching old Sportcenter commercials and Japanese gameshows. However when you get right down to it 90% of YouTube's content falls into two categories.

1) Video of little Billy's first baseball game or baby Sally's first steps, uploaded to give the grandparents an opportunity to see these magical moments. These videos, of course, have no appeal to anyone else in the world.

2) Copyrighted material. SNL clips. World of Warcraft machinima. Morons lipsynching the latest Black Eyed Peas song. Video of Oleg Maskaev knocking Hasim Rakhman through the ropes a decade ago.

All of these are, in some way, shape or form, copyrighted material. You want to use it for your personal use, fine, the big boys aren't going to go after you. But now that YouTube has actual capital behind it (Google Money) you can be sure the heavyweights are going to be beating a path to your door with cease-and-decist orders.

This just smacks of the late 90's internet boom, when even moronic ideas like pets.com had dumptrucks full of money dumped in their laps. Google would rather be known as the company that bought a failing YouTube than the company that passed up the opportunity to buy a massively successful YouTube.

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