Google really is buying YouTube
Well, I’ll be damned. I was sure that it wasn’t going to happen. But it’s really true. Google themselves announced that they are buying YouTube.
I wonder what their plan is for dealing with the potential lawsuits over copyright issues? I know they signed a bunch of deals with record companies, which I’m sure included extra sweeteners to keep them from suing. But I gotta believe there are plenty more lawyers already lining up.
I don’t know. Maybe they are already talking to movie and TV studios as well. If anyone has enough money to through a big media companies in order for them to dial down greed-factor, it’s Google. And it sounds like they are working on some application that will recognize copyrighted material and, rather than taking it down, will pay the copyright owners for the right to keep it up. Presumably by automatically slapping ads on it. That’s brilliant. That way the more people post clips of Family Guy, the more money FOX makes. Still think it would work out that way anyway since it would only create new fans, but this way is even better for the copyright holders.
I’m cautiously happy about this. Of course, there are a lot of variables and danger-points here, but if they can keep they can pull this off, it could be a very big step towards the nirvana of watching anything anywhere anytime.
