The Google+YouTube deal is a huge deal for the web. Good commentary here, here and here.

Two logic flows on this deal could be:

1. Google Video totally sucks regardless of all the investment and people the folks at Sunnyview have put into it. Given the importance of video and the growing ease of delivering it via the web, Google would have had to acquire a player just as Yahoo acquired Jumpcut. If you have to open your wallet, why not buy the vertical.
2. Video specific searches and web start pages will proliferate. Already I know enough folks who skip all the Googles and Yahoos when they are looking for an image or photograph. They go straight to Flickr, and get what they want without all the web optimized, thumbnaily business that the full web crawlers deliver. Given videos ability to carve out a niche (portable media players, cameras, art), you could see a scenario where the video focused vertical player is siphoning off Google’s search traffic and pulling what will undoubtedly be tagged by the rejuvenated online advertising industry as the most valuable CPMs.

Congrats to the YouTube boys, $1.6 billion is a better exit than I thought they would get. I have said before that Google’s integration of video into their advertising channel could be the start of something big. With the acquisition of all that Diet Coke-Mentos content from YouTube we’ll see what pops.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 10th, 2006 at 9.46am and is filed under 2.0, social computing, Google, video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.