We had some modem problems, and other complications, so we must so a quick hit and run on posting today. But real quick, you probably heard about Google buying YouTube for $1.65 BILLION yesterday — that’s more than 3000 Enterprise models! The deal registered higher on the Richter scale than a dinky old North Korean nuke. Everyone is yapping about it, but here’s one of the most clear analyses we’ve read, from Forrester online analyst Charlene Li:

YouTube is winning the hearts of the audience because video search simply doesn’t work. You have to instead rely on the opinions, ratings, and playlist compilations of others to discover good video.

Why would YouTube want to be bought by Google? My colleagues, Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler, discussed earlier this week in their blogs that earlier this week that YouTube faces substantial risk with lawsuits coming from music and video copyright holders, and how they could potentially address those concerns – namely by developing technologies to identify copyrighted materials against a body of work provided by the copyright holders. But who is in a better position to develop that technology – 60 burnt out people at YouTube or the legendary technical minds at Google?


It’s interesting that the social networking aspercts of Google are what seem to have put it ahead — we preferred Google Video’s quality, but we’re clearly in the minority.

$1.65 bil is a lot of moolah, but put it in perspective. About 100 million videos are downloaded from YouTube every day. By contract, recent Super Bowls have drawn about 80-90 million viewers.and charge about $2.4 million for a 30 second ad spot. Add up the impressions, and you see why the Internet is ruling us all: as ad dollars go, so goes the media.