Google buys YouTube: Another opinion
Oct 10th, 2006 by jimmoore
From Nuodai. A fifteen-year-old user of YouTube has an important observation on Google buying YouTube. His point, communicated in a YouTube video, of course, is that Google might do bettter for the total worldwide community of Internet users by investing a billion dollars in making its own site better for users, rather than buying up its competitor.
That is a very important point, and provides an important corrective to my previous post. I celebrate the aquisition as a triumph for the creative community. Google forced to buy YouTube.
But the user referenced above is correct to note that what happens when a site is purchased by a big player is that the big player is no longer forced to compete with the small one, and the small one may no longer be forced to work as hard to be successful. Example, Blogger after the Google acquisition.
Chad and Steve in their video announcing the aquisition say that it will allow them to focus on creating a better user experience. Right. If they are not especially diligent, the aquisition will allow them to focus on tuning their Ferraris and dealing with Google management politics.