Recent Web Industry Activity

[Lasher]

I just don't get Google paying 1.85 billion dollars for YouTube and Yahoo seriously considering (although they seem to have backed off) paying 1 billion for Facebook.

It's not really a question of whether or not these companies are worth that much, but that there are much better deals out there for the same money. Take Cnet for example. Cnet has a market cap of just over 1 billion, even at a very nice premium on the stock's 90 day moving average it could easily be acquired for less than YouTube. They are already profitable, they produce excellent content, and I'm sure Yahoo in particular would love to own names such as News.com, Search.com, Download.com, Shopper.com, Radio.com, Shareware.com and TV.com. I would suggest that either Google or Yahoo could take a name like "TV.com", put some of their best developers on it and easily blow away YouTube within a year.

Yahoo and Google don't need more eyeballs, they just need to do more with those they have, Google in particular.

Thoughts?

 

[cache]

you don't want to miss the next big thing.

 

[gazzip]

I guess its just because they have so much traffic - They will soon make alot of that money back by selling advertising space to the big brand names.

Who knows what else Google has planned for youtube ?

Off their website

YouTube Advertising Opportunities

Do you think your company deals in areas that are of interest to the YouTube community? Would you like to take part in bringing awareness to your products in a way that stands out from the typical Internet site?

Do you have a campaign budget of at least $25,000?

If your answer to all of these questions is "yes", please take a moment to fill out this form—we promise to get back in touch with you.


.....er... that would be a NO from me :hehe:


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[floatingworld]

youtube has market leader advantage and the purchase was as much to do with potential competition as the value today. If you are the market leader then your site is sticky. Google were protecting their market stream, but even so youtube will be advanced to keep its position. One year ago I was using a number of yahoo applications and yahoo was my home: now its all the google applications; more dynamic, more flexible, more fun and just damn better....with the acquisition of youtube many more people will take the plunge into google and make it the destination of choice for a whole number of things: note also that the sale was mainly paid for in shares and the shares went up: the market recognises a good thing ie that it was money well spent (ha ha famous last words)

 

[Lasher]

Not necessarily questioning the value of YouTube, and maybe my perspective is too narrowed by being a "domainer", but for 2bn I'd rather have a well established internet pioneer with a profitable revenue stream and names like search.com, help.com, news.com, mp3.com, tv.com, etc (Cnet have a phenomenal name portfolio). YouTube is a wave, Cnet has been around since the beginning.

Cnet's problem is they don't have the investment capital to really make the most of the domains they own, but in the hands of a Yahoo or a Google that could change. I wonder, for example, how many people over the years have typed in "news.com", seen a tech site, and never gone back.

 

[Spade]

I think the issue is being missed altogether. Google is not thinking "what company should we purchase to make more money right now?" its probably thinking "Where is the future of the internet?" and the issue is that with sites like myspace and thefacebook your gearing up to social networking and media sharing. People want content, they want to view what they want when they want it. YouTube IS the direction that google needs to move. This is a smart buy for them, regardless of how quickly it can be turned into profit.