The rumor is spreading that Google is looking at acquiring YouTube. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal both published articles on the rumor yesterday. The supposed price tag? $1.6 billion.
Depending on the stock-to-cash ratio this is probably a good move for Google. First, Google hasn’t done well with its video efforts yet. They haven’t figured out the community aspects of online video sharing. YouTube will help there. Second, YouTube needs a company like Google. As YouTube’s library expands, flaws in its searching become more and more evident. YouTube also needs to work with a larger company that understands how to handle thorny copyright issues. Google has done well here too.
What Google needs to not lose sight of is the bigger goal of merging video with more of its services. For instance, where is video on news.google.com? Shouldn’t there be direct links to live news broadcasts that are covering breaking news? And what about video links in Google’s main search results? If you’re looking for a case study on the use of Tablet PCs in the classroom, why can’t there be links to the videos in the search results page? YouTube can’t help here.