Google confirmed today that it has agreed to acquire the #1 video site on the Web, YouTube. Google acquired the company at a price that shakes up the industry, $1.65 billion.

People may ask if Google can make that work. I think the deal makes sense from a couple perspectives. First, Google’s own video has never quite taken off. People seemed to have drawn to the community nature of YouTube. Second, Google can make a lot more revenue off the site than YouTube could have on their own. I would look for a lot more AdSense to be seen on the site, as well as Google start to play more in the video ad space. The YouTube property provides an excellent test bed for pushing out new ad technologies through video. And third, Google has been fairly unseen in the social network space since it’s acquisition of Okrut. If Google can pull off a merge between YouTube community with Okrut, assuming that Google is still interested in Orkut, then this could be an instant population of a very powerful social network.

The next big thing is Stickam, which takes MySpace to the next level. But who will acquire them? If I was to guess, I would say possibly another portal, but there is also a possibility of someone like CBS (who has said they want to buy the “next YouTube”) or possibly IAC. Cnet has been gobbling up Web 2.0 companies, but none yet that seem to be of a major scale.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 9th, 2006 at 3:43 pmand is filed under Blog Marketing(t) , Internet Marketing(t) , Search Engine Marketing(t) . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.