$1.65 billion
Jeez! I think we all know what I am refering to. If not, that obsurd monatary amount in the title refers to the price Google paid to aquire YouTube this week. After paying off the VC funders each founder is going to receive something like $200 million. Gawd I wish I was part of that team. Well despite the large amount it does make some sense. Even though they had teamed up with Myspace for an ad program Google had yet to have a true social Network. They offered Friendster a bunch of money some time back but the now failing social network quickly declined (and is now probably kicking themselves) Also, Google Video just wasn’t up to par with YouTube and what do large companies do when their competition is defeating them? They buy them! It will be interesting to see what happens with this property. It is known that there is alot of copyrighted content that has been illegally posted to YouTube. No legal action had been taken because it was clear that YouTube was not making any money and really didnt have any. Companies have been waiting for YouTube to be purchased so that they could sue someone with Money. Will that content come down? We’ll have to wait and see.
In other Google News. The recently aquired Writely is offically no longer called Writely and has been paired with Google spreadsheets to be called Google Docs & Spreadsheets.