Google has bought Youtube. What does it mean for users of the latter?

[Buried Alien]

In the PAC-MAN like world of business, the enormous Google has just bought the upstart Youtube.

What does this mean for users of Youtube? Is it a gain or a loss in terms of user-friendliness?

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[Wesley Dodds]

It means you should run, not walk, to youtube and download everything you want to keep before google gets sued.

[StoneGold]

Meh, means nothing. Why? Because everything already started to disappear off YouTube when the suits got wind of its popularity anyways.

[Patient Boy]

Meh, means nothing. Why? Because everything already started to disappear off YouTube when the suits got wind of its popularity anyways.

True. I'm hoping this means more user-friendliness though. Blogger got a lot better, for example, after the Google takeover. I'm not sure Google has that much in the way of corporate ethics anymore though, after the whole China thing.

[Brian Cronin]

For what it's worth, Google did not really BUY YouTube, at least not in the normal sense of the word. They made YouTube PART of Google.

The $1.65 billion was in STOCK, not cash.

Therefore, the only way the YouTube guy makes a ton of money is if this combo is a successful one, so it's not a case of "Sell it and walk away." They need Google to be successful to make money, so I would imagine Chad Hurley and Steve Chen would do everything they could to keep YouTube as popular as it has been.

-Brian

[cactusmaac]

Couldn't they just sell the stock?

[JDogindy]

Well, It'll be alright, but I hope that they don't add commercials.

[cactusmaac]

I haven't noticed any difference with Blogger, but Google's buy-out of Deja really ticked me off. You went from having Usenet posts appear in two minutes to taking four hours.

[thehod]

The main difference is that before you could actually access Youtube home page.

Now you can't.