With a lot of attention paid to the big number, $1.65 billion, there are some other numbers that illustrate Google’s interest in YouTube much better than the price tag. Google CEO Eric Schmidt probably isn’t having second thoughts about the acquisition of YouTube.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, when he said, “I drank what?”
— Chris Knight on self realization, in 1985’s Real Genius
“In acquiring YouTube, Google has, in one fell swoop, increased their number of video streams – and potential ad revenue from streaming – tenfold,” said Gian Fulgoni, comScore chairman. ComScore claimed it measures actual video streaming activity, as opposed to market share of sites, and can better assess the online video arena.
By the comScore numbers, Google will see a huge jump in the video streams people in the US view from their sites. In July 2006, Google delivered some 60 million streams to visitors. YouTube dished out 649 million in the same period. More than 106.5 million US visitors viewed video content for the month.
Plenty of promise for Google’s video advertising aspirations, whatever they may be, exists. The importance of online video has reached a point where online content providers from big media companies to individual media netcasters have embraced it in various forms.
The concept of “media company” may be the context in which Google should be considered. Publishing 2.0 blogger Scott Karp wrote that the YouTube acquisition “solidifies Google’s position at the center of media.”
“Google is now the archetypal media company – online video is just the next step in their quest to monetize the world’s content through advertising,” said Karp. “You supply the content – Google will take care of the rest.”
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David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
