Google’s recently-announced purchase of Youtube for the cool sum of 1.6 billion dollars has excited the chattering classes of the Internet.
People are asking all kinds of things about the deal:
– Will Youtube ever make any money?
– Is this is evidence of dot com bubble 2.0?
– Why didn’t I start a video sharing website 18 months ago?
But no one seems to be articulating the most powerful argument in favor of the deal: Youtube has already established itself as the top brand when it comes to online video search, and search is what Google is supposed to do best.
How many times in the last few months have you heard someone say something like “Jon Stewart did this thing on the Daily Show, it’s excellent, just search Youtube for it”. Or “You know those two Chinese kids lip-synching to a Back Street Boys song, just search for it on Youtube”.
Further anecdotal evidence of the importance of search to Youtube’s success: Judging from viewer email and comments on our Youtube page, many viewers see our videos after searching Youtube for terms like ‘Beijing’ and ‘Chinese’.
Thanks to its early starter advantage and ease of use, Youtube has become the one online video website that everybody knows. The buzz about the Google deal can only increase the strength of the Youtube brand.
Acquiring Youtube means that Google now owns the leader of video search.
- For more about the Youtube Google deal and its implications for China, see this post at David Wolf’s Silicon Hutong blog: It’s YouTube, Jim, But Not As We Know It