Google buys YouTube - what does it mean?
Just an hour or so after I hinted towards this rumour in my previous post, it has been confirmed that Google is buying YouTube for an insanely large sum of $1.65 billion United States Dollars. What will this mean to normal internet users like ourself?
As everybody knows, Google did an attempt to challenge YouTube with their own service, Google Video. Unfortunately for them it didn’t quite work out, and they have now taken the consequences and bought their way into a market which they obviously see enormous potential and value in.
Right now there is no word on what will happen to Google Video. What is for certain is that YouTube is an internet-phenoma second to none (MySpace can arguably compete though), and it would be a pretty dumb move by Google to try and rebrand it much, other than slapping the mandatory Google (or just G) infront of it. So my best guess is that Google Video will face a slow death, and will eventually be merged into YouTube in a seamless way.
My concerns about this is the status Google have been gaining too quickly. A brief look at what they’ve got in their arsenal right now reveals: The best and fastest growing e-mail service. One of the most popular blogging services online. Google Earth, which is more or less one of a kind. And of course their seemingly untouchable search-engine. Now you can add the without a doubt most popular video-sharing portal, which also happens to be one of the most popular sites on the entire world wide web.
If you also take into consideration that they are one of the, if not the biggest player in the online advertising market, they are starting to look mighty big. And with I don’t just mean big, I mean BIG. My fears are that with the momentum Google have worked up right now, they are quickly becoming the internet equivalent to Microsoft, as some people have already claimed before me. Of course people might argue that it’s much easier to challenge Google since they are more or less purely internet-based, and that might be the case, but the concerns are still valid in my opinion.
My main quirk with Google becoming so large so fast, just like Microsoft did, is that it can lead to a stale period with less innovation throughout the World Wide Web. Google has been one of the online-players that have driven the development further, and if they get too comfortable in their position, it’s almost standard procedure that they will slack off, and innovativity will be forgotten. I know that it has become a trend to hate Microsoft, but there is no denying the fact that the position they got lead to a dry period with little or nothing new. Think Internet Explorer. My fears are that Google is closing in on a position that is remarkably similar to the one Microsoft had ten years back. I mean, who can go online for ten minutes without using one of Google’s services?
Of course I just might be wrong, and Google will keep up with innovating new and great applications, and set standards for others to follow and surpass.