Kudos to Youtube for getting them to say yes. My advice to you is to always protect your downside. Ignore all the scammers who want your money, and dont listen to all the tax scammers who want to save you money on taxes. Writing that check is painful, but its the right thing to do. That aside..
It will be interesting to see what happens next and what happens in the copyright world. I still think Google Lawyers will be a busy, busy bunch. I dont think you can sue Google into oblivion, but as others have mentioned, if Google gets nailed one single time for copyright violation, there are going to be more shareholder lawsuits than doans has pills to go with the pile on copyright suits that follow. Think maybe how Google discloses what they perceive the copyright risk to be in the SEC filings might be an interesting read ?
I think there will be supoenas to get the names of Youtube and Google Video users. Lots of them as those copyright owners not part of the gravy train go after both Google and their users for infringement.
It will be interesting to see how this impacts DRM. As it stands now, there is no DRM on all that video being offered from Google or YouTube. Millions of copyrighted videos that their owners spent a boatload to copyprotect that is available to everyone and everyone without it. (Personally i think DRM is a waste of money, but will all those labels and content providers ?)
I think it was interesting how Google and YT both rushed to get deals done with the music labels. That tells me that they arent comfortable hiding behind the safe harbor laws. If they were, they would just be telling people to send take down notices rather than doing deals that require software to detect copyrights.
It will be interesting to see if Youtube moves their videos over to Googles Data Centers. Google is a centralized datacenter with peering from what I can tell. COmpletely different than what the CDN networks do. Will that set a new trend ? It makes bandwidth much cheaper as others have pointed out.
It will be interesting to see just how google reconciles selling videos like Crazy in Love from Sony, when the same video is available as a user upload for free from youtube.
it will be interesting to see how Fox reacts to this deal Fox owns content. Neither google or YT does. Could Fox, the owner of Myspace put GooTube in a huge hole by being legally aggressive and going after every video of Stewy from Family Guy , American Idol, any of their TV shows ? The same with their movies. Beyond just Gootube, (and I mash them together with nothing but love :), Fox could make them look real bad by using supoaenas to go after individual Gootube users. Fox is also a stickler for DRM, they aint gonna like having their content floating DRM free around the net. Sure, myspace would have to clean up some of their own videos, but it would be a far easier chore than Gootube has. Now that would be a celebrity lawyer match worth watching.
Which in turns means that the Copyright Detection Systems in place by Google better be a whole lot better than they are right now. They are going to have to detect music, TV Network Bugs, all kinds of protected materials. Right now they are doing nothing. Which leads to movies, like ours
We sent our Take down notice today by fax. But should I supoaena the name of the person who uploaded it ? I wont. Someone else will for their content.
And what if Im completely, absolutely wrong and no one sues anyone ? That everyone just loves the fact that their content is available to tens of millions of viewers and advertisers and Youtube and Google definitely qualify to be protected behind the Safe Harbors of the DMCA ?
That Im an idiot and it really is different this time, and the content companies have all recognized that ?
Well, I'm ready for that too. I went ahead and registered www.effingreat.com because thats how much fun its going to be using Filesanywhere.com features to support a "load everything you own and share it with world" website.
I will host in the same way as Youtube and Google. Upload in the same, dont ask, dont tell approach. I will sell ads however they do. Preroll, or adsense or whatever.
Only i will expand the storage beyond 100mbs and will open it up to books, term papers, pictures, movies, music, articles, anything and everything that can be digitized. I will add the appropriate disclaimers and provide a cool social networking interface. Maybe something like Goowy.Com or maybe something like Flixster.com. I mean, why not ? What could be cooler User Generated Content than the termpaper you wrote on Daniel Boone ? Or what could be more interesting than scanning in a book you wanted to give to someone and just posting it ? And dang, just wholesale upload all of your MP3s.
And best of all, I would get a license for public performance from ASCAP/BMI so the people that have to fight the hardest to get paid, actually do !
And of course I would have some other tricks up my sleeve. Maybe pull a page from the old shareware days. Add a paypal link to every content page and let people get paid for their original content. If no one is going to sue anyone for copyright infringement anymore, maybe you could upload stuff you dont have the rights to and get paid by generous people who want to transfer some dollars via PayPal to you.
Am I suprised, by the Google YT deal. Yes. Does it open up a whole new world if they go liability free ?
You have no idea.
I still think Google is crazy :)
Reader Comments
(Page 1)2. Mark,
Thanks for the intriguing posts over the last few days re Google. Good reading. Only time will tell whether or not this deal bears fruit but I find your posts a refreshing alternative to the CNBC bobbleheads and the mindless drivel spewed from the media tripping over themselves to cover it ad nauseum. An alternative view is hard to find and I thank you for that.
Cheers.
Posted at 4:34PM on Oct 9th 2006 by Steve
3. Oh and Mark, count me in for helping on you file hosting/sharing idea...solid plan, might be able to get $1.75B for it in 18-24 months (I'd try and get some cash w/stock rather than an all stock deal).
Posted at 4:40PM on Oct 9th 2006 by marc
4. 1.6-billion will turn out to be a bargain for Google. While everyone's going goo-goo over YouTube, do you realize how much video is not online? Google will make the push towards putting all the world's video online...Stay tuned.
Posted at 4:42PM on Oct 9th 2006 by Ken Leebow
6. Please join us in the collaboratively filtered realtime discussion:
TOPIC: google youtube
START TIME:
2006-10-10 , 00:00 CEST (Brussels, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Stockholm).
2006-09-10 , 23:00 BST (London, Dublin, Lisbon).
2006-09-10 , 18:00 EDT (New York, Detroit, Toronto, Montreal).
2006-09-10 , 15:00 PDT (Vancouver, Los Angeles, Tijuana, Yukon).
TO JOIN:
go to the following url:
https://www.synthetron.com/account/tag/conversation/googleyoutube
Confirm [yes] to the security warning and follow the instructions.
(In some companies a proxy login dialog box will appear. You then need to type your company internet username and password).
YOU NEED:
A Java plugin installed on your browser.
Posted at 4:46PM on Oct 9th 2006 by synthetron
7. Well Mark,
Like your self I don't think the video sharing market is mature enough to have one company acquire another.
I am still waiting for a press release by google telling us is an April’s fools gag. But, I just checked my calendar and today’s not April 1st.
If YT did make their money is time that the take that money pay their taxes and bring out the next generation of social networking sites.
Only time will tell I guess. But, I did enjoy your post.
Dave Mora
http://www.eunknown.org
8. Does anyone know what percentage of searches on Google are for video?
Anyone want to guess how fast that percentage will increase?
When will I be using Google search on my television instead of the same 8 year old interface from my monopoly cable company?
Posted at 5:20PM on Oct 9th 2006 by Tom McCann
9. 1.6-billion is a bargain. Google will now compete with the cable and satellite companies. For example, they can host full episodes of the Daily Show similar to the way iTunes does now. All copyrighted material will be subscriber based.
Posted at 5:29PM on Oct 9th 2006 by fast eddie
10. It doesn't matter that it's short clips - there are all kinds of copyrighted materials in use with these videos and with that comes all kinds of violations, especially when the video is combined with unlicensed music, such as a montage from Grey's Anatomy to some nu-metal rock song that I can't remember the name of. Not only could ABC sue, but so could the RIAA.
What makes anyone think that ABC, CBS, or any other broadcast network isn't going to get tired of policing this stuff for takedown notices? Or the RIAA? Why shouldn't they then seek judicial intervention?
I'm sure that Google's peeps have thought it out but obviously we don't weigh the risks and consequences the same. There is going to be some litigation eventually that will tell us where it's all going, and we'll know then if it was a good investment.
Posted at 5:48PM on Oct 9th 2006 by Sharr
11. Mark,
Another thing to remember is that Google has for years been rumored to be buying up lots of dark fiber. My understanding (from reading various places on and offline) is that Google's datacenter is massively distributed - may appear functionally to be "centralized" but in practice it is spread out over many different data centers around the globe with massive redundancy.
I suspect that migrating YouTube's servers to the Google data centers (and to Google's fiber where they have it) will very significently ease the bandwidth costs YouTube experiences.
It is still very early for video and other content on the web - but clearly we are at the beginning of a very dramatic shift in consumer's entertainment patterns. I'm certainly not a typical consumer, but in the past year I have sold my TV and while I still go see movies at Theaters, I no longer watch TV at home, though I do download many podcasts (about 400mb/day or so) and watch videos/clips on YouTube and other sites.
In the future, I definitely forsee using tivo-like devices through my computers to download content I'll enjoy and watch it on my own schedules, along with continued and growing use of downloaded content such as podcasts. For live events I already listen to many over the Internet (being in San Francisco it is often hard to catch the Bears when they are playing)- and I fully expect to fairly easily in the near future be able to get live streams for just what I am interested in (perhaps for a fee and certainly with commercials) on demand without buying the bundle of channels I'll never use.
Shannon
Posted at 5:57PM on Oct 9th 2006 by Shannon Clark
12. Google is in the web traffic business and a company with a graph that looks like this is a gem:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=1y&size=large&compare_sites=&y=r&url=youtube.com#top
Posted at 6:01PM on Oct 9th 2006 by Antonio Howell
14. What if people start using proxies to anonymously upload/download content? That's gotta suck for the companies.
Posted at 6:12PM on Oct 9th 2006 by configuration
15. Mark. This isn't P2P and the YouTube product isn't going to be out of business if copyright holders want their stuff off of YouTube. DMCA provides a system and G/YT can certainly beef up their processes to make sure that happens in a timely fashion.
This is a big and huge win for Google (and I have been a vocal critic of their product strategy) as it gives them a legit product outside of classifieds something their homespun products have not done.
16. It's suddenly clear why Google bought Youtube: it's their answer to sites like Revver which offer compensation for user uploaded content. Google will share revenue derived from the content with the uploader, any copyright owners, and Google of course. A simple solution to the potential growth of revenue sharing video sites. Smart!
Posted at 6:35PM on Oct 9th 2006 by Christopher Peterson
17. Hey Mark -
All of this tech talk about 'dark networks,' posting by proxies, DCMA...
The first thing that came to my mind was, did you really grab effingreat.com? (You did) The second thing was, how come I didn't think of that domain? The third was, is that effinggreat.com with one 'g' or two?
I am now the proud owner of effinggreat.com (2 'g's),
I will let you know if there is a ton of overflow traffic and if there is than we can talk business.com type of $ for a transfer -or maybe just a pair of Mav's tickets and a beer.
Now I have to start building my effinggreat empire!
Posted at 7:24PM on Oct 9th 2006 by Hexagontaginal
18. The latest news about Google buying YouTube for $1.6 Billion made StockRing reconsider Google stock and try to understand the new Internet marketing strategy of this giant. We all know that Google makes its money when lots of consumers search for some products on the Internet and click on ads displayed by the company. Every time there is a click there is a fee that Google gets. So, the basic business goal that Google has right now is to direct more and more Web surfers to the pages where Google can display its ads. So far Google was trying to create such Web Hot Spots on its own hoping to create a popular product comparable to Google.com web site.
To accomplish this task the company hired a huge work force of about 8,000 people who are trying to create and improve Google products to give them away later for free to Web users. Gmail, Picasa, Google Maps, Google Finance, Google Video are all examples of such products. However, most of these efforts are not contributing at all or not enough to Google’s revenue compare to its original Search web site. The basic problem that Google faces is that nobody knows what would be tomorrow’s new hit thing on the Internet so that the company could start to build it today. If we look at the latest examples, web sites such as Facebook.com, YouTube.com and MySpace.com all came from nowhere and quickly became extremely popular and suddenly were in the list of top 10 most visited web sites… right next to Google. If Google could only predict what would be the next super popular trend on the web, it for sure could build a product better than most of its Startup competitors. However we all know that real mega stars of the Web such as Google, My Space, YouTube are super rare phenomena that is extremely hard to foresee and even harder to plan for.
The latest news from Google co-founder Sergey Brin that his company will stop creating new products and instead try to improve the old ones shows that the company changes its approach. Google management now has 35 different products on their hands but not one of them matches the success of the original Google.com web site. And this is understandable, because according to statistics Google.com was one of the hundreds of web sites that were trying to build search engines, but only Google became the real star. Unless you are developing hundreds of products your chances to strike gold like next Google are pretty slim and 35 different products is a good effort but not good enough from the probability point of view.
It looks like Google decided to change its Business development and marketing processes and stick to much more effective and quick revenue growth plan. The idea behind Google’s future growth is to make sure that Google ads are displayed on the majority of the top 10 consumer oriented web sites. There are 2 main ways to accomplish it. The first way is to try to strike an advertising deal with top web sites like Google did with MySpace.com. The second way is just simply buy the Web site and the company that owns it such as what happened between Google and YouTube today. Luckily for Google it has about $10 billon in the bank to buy a few of such web sites. The second Buying approach is easier to execute but maybe expensive. However, it is one sure way for Google to grow its revenue and stay on top of its competitors who might not have enough cash to do the same.
In conclusion the latest Google move to buy YouTube gives new refreshed hopes to young entrepreneurs who dream of creating new popular Web based products and services for large number of consumers. The new formula for success is really simple: Create a web site or service that attracts a lot of Web surfers and makes them view many pages per visit. If your web site becomes super popular Google, Yahoo, or MSN would be interested in either acquiring you or striking an exclusive advertising deal worth millions. And since creation of such mega successful web sites is unpredictable process anybody can do it with enough effort, patience and creativity.
Posted at 7:50PM on Oct 9th 2006 by Eric Katsov
19.
It is unclear to me how Google/YouTube monetizes the video traffic they have. Even if you take out the copyright issues, which as you have outlined are daunting, how do you sell video advertising around the wild west of YouTube content? No one knows what the next hot video on YouTube will be. As an advertiser to you want to associate your brand with that content? Are you going to blindly purchase inventory around this week’s hot soft porn video of the day?
I don’t think so.
So now YouTube is back to creating pre-populated channels of news, sports, finance etc. so they can create an area that is “safe” for advertisers. I know a few sites that already do that, and they have additional text, images, and editorial content to go with the video.
Is the new YouTube plan to create a music video site? With ratings, user programmed “stations”, collaborative filtering for suggesting content? I know sites who already do that :), sites with years of experience and built up user bases. Sites that have associated editorial, text, image, oh I am repeating myself.
Maybe they should create a media portal with video seamlessly interspersed with text, images, and other content?
I don’t think so.
YouTube is fun because you don’t know what to expect. YouTube is hard to monetize for the same reason.
Justin Madison
Posted at 7:51PM on Oct 9th 2006 by Justin Madison
20. Mark,
I think you're right. I'm amazed people seem to have forgotten about the dotcom implosion. Two billion for a site to post your videos on, including stolen videos, has everyone forgotten about Napster?
Google is buying users? Does that mean YouTube users don't use Google?
I can't see the upside.
Posted at 7:52PM on Oct 9th 2006 by Ted
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1. This is the first time G has bought "users" it'll be interesting to see how/if they can maintain the "coolness" of YT. Time will tell, I'd says it is still 50/50 on if this was a good move or not.
Posted at 4:29PM on Oct 9th 2006 by marc