A View on View :: Cuban May Be Right about YouTube-Google

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Cuban May Be Right about YouTube-Google

by Mark Evans on Tue 10 Oct 2006 07:19 AM EDT | Permanent Link

Mark Cuban may have missed the mark when he refused to believe Google would buy YouTube but now that the deal's getting done, his unorthodox stance on the $1.65-billion marriage shouldn't be ignored. His post today - somewhat hard to find amid the blogosphere tsunami unleashed yesterday - raises an excellent point: with YouTube poised to become of the Google empire (and bidding a champagne-drenched farewell to its status as a scrappy, peoples' champion start-up) how long will it take before Google's major rivals (e.g. Fox, which owns MySpace, which also delivers a lot of video) unleash their legal hounds on YouTube? After all, Google will be a major player in the video business so why would content owners let it use unlicensed material to support the YouTube's growth. The other side of the coin is Google may be content to deal with any content issues if that's what it takes to own the world's biggest online video brand. Two other points before you go onto to read everything you ever wanted to know about YouTube: 1. YouTube was started in 20 months ago; it raised its first round of VC last November, and talked about an IPO a few months ago. It's been a wonderful, wild ride from Chad Hurley and Steven Chen; and 2. Sequoia Capital, which also had a major stake in Google, could see its $11.5-million investment in YouTube be worth as much as $500-million. Sweet.
Update: Nice to see the New York Times has finally caught up to me - :) - with a story about how Sequoia was the only VC to back YouTube. It is interesting that Sequoia was able to corner the deal, particularly when YouTube raised a second round after it had gained some serious traction.

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Comments

Re: Cuban May Be Right about YouTube-Google

by Rob Hyndman on Tue 10 Oct 2006 08:03 AM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

Mark, Cuban was late to the game on this issue - others of us have been talking about it for ages. Note that Arrington is raising it now too, especially in the context of Fox, which of course has not done a deal with YT, and as we know from recent stats, sends a lot of traffic to YT, and is its main competitor. Cuban is simply the most visible person to not simply run with the (cheerleading) pack.

Re: Cuban May Be Right about YouTube-Google

by Paul Kedrosky on Tue 10 Oct 2006 01:32 PM EDT | Permanent Link

Mark -- While you're right about Sequoia being YouTube's sole VC backer, I've written about it, and reminded the Times as much in interviews ages ago. It just took a while to get to print.

Re: Re: Cuban May Be Right about YouTube-Google

by Mark Evans on Tue 10 Oct 2006 04:23 PM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

paul,
here's a VC question for you: how do you think sequoia managed to corner both financing deals? wouldn't have competition given youtube better terms?

mark

Re: Cuban May Be Right about YouTube-Google

by AGORACOM on Tue 10 Oct 2006 04:06 PM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

Mark, I don't believe Fox or others will be an immediate litigation factor. Why? Litigation is strictly about money - but so is partnering as evidenced by Universal, CBS and Sony agreements yesterday.

As such, I believe Fox and others will first approach Google about partnering and sharing revenues. It accomplishes the same goal as litigation without the lawyers.

Second, I don't believe Fox et al will want to risk being shut out of YT. At the end of the day, Fox is a content company that wants its content to proliferate in a manner that earns cash while promoting their programs.

Finally, Fox already has a partnership track record with Google (Ad deal on MySpace). As such, there is no reason to believe they can't come to terms on a deal over on YT.

None of this would have been possible without the Google acquisition. Fox and other content providers would have never dealt with YT due to YT's lack of experience and revenue model. Google has turned that dynamic on its head and Fox et al will only be too happy to deal now.

Thoughts?

Best,
George

Re: Re: Cuban May Be Right about YouTube-Google

by Mark Evans on Tue 10 Oct 2006 04:35 PM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

george,
i think you're probably right. the combination of google's financial clout and youtube's reach/popularity is pretty sweet.

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\n"; #File retrieval failed - exiting function pass back old values. return $this->GetParameters($AdFilePath); } #TODO - Replace with file retrieval $ad_params = $this->GetParameters($AdFilePath); $new_ad_params = $this->_newRowPosition($ad_params); #TODO - Add SlidingExpiration for REFRESH Dates that dont change # Example: REFRESH DATE permanently affixed to 2 days prior, every 30sec refresh will attempt a new page download # Temp Solution is to UPDATE FILE_DATE with AD_ROTATE_DATE $new_ad_params["AD_FILEDATE"] = $new_ad_params["AD_ROTATEDATE"]; #echo "Writing new ad
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\n"; return $new_ad_params; } } /** BEGIN Backwards Compatibility Routines */ if (! function_exists('array_combine')) { function array_combine($keys, $values) { foreach($keys as $key) $out[$key] = array_shift($values); return $out; } } if (!function_exists('fputcsv')) { function fputcsv($filePointer, $dataArray, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { // Write a line to a file // $filePointer = the file resource to write to // $dataArray = the data to write out // $delimeter = the field separator // Build the string $string = ""; // No leading delimiter $writeDelimiter = FALSE; foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) { // Replaces a double quote with two double quotes $dataElement=str_replace("\"", "\"\"", $dataElement); // Adds a delimiter before each field (except the first) if($writeDelimiter) $string .= $delimiter; // Encloses each field with $enclosure and adds it to the string $string .= $enclosure . $dataElement . $enclosure; // Delimiters are used every time except the first. $writeDelimiter = TRUE; } // end foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) // Append new line $string .= "\n"; // Write the string to the file return fwrite($filePointer,$string); } } if (!function_exists('fgetcsv')) { #TODO - Remove or ??? #Originally built to handle PHP4 style of fgetcsv $CSVstruct = array('Sep' => ','); function fgetcsv($handle, $length=1024, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { $rows = ParseCSVStream(fgets($handle),"\n",false); return $rows[0]; } } // append a CSV row containing data converted from source array $data. Actual conversion is done by ExCSVRowWalker() function AppendCSVRow($data) { global $CSVstruct; array_walk($data,'ExCSVRowWalker'.($CSVstruct['OutEOL']=="\n"?'N':'')); $CSVstruct['File'] .= implode($CSVstruct['Sep'],$data).$CSVstruct['OutEOL']; } // returns an array of rows (each row being an array of columns) with parsed data. Returns false when conversion fails. Auto-detects Win/Mac/*nix newline characters, which are converted all to the sequence specified (defaults to $CSVstruct['OutEOL']) for your convenience. function ParseCSVStream($data, $newline="\n", $associative=true) { global $CSVstruct; $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\r","\n",str_replace("\r\n","\n",$data)); if ($newline!="\n") $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\n",$newline,$CSVstruct['File']); $CSVstruct['OutEOL'] = $newline; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = 0; $CSVstruct['Error'] = false; $CSVstruct['EOF'] = false; $res = array(); if ($associative) { $titles = ParseCSVRow(); while (($row = ParseCSVRow())!==false) { $newa = array(); //possible optimization: might use array_combine() - requires PHP 5 for ($col = 0; $col0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',str_replace($CSVstruct['OutEOL'],"\n",$item)).'"'; } function ExCSVRowWalkerN(&$item) { if (!is_numeric($item)&&(strlen($item)>0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',$item).'"'; } // read next line from buffer. function RowInput() { global $CSVstruct; if ($CSVstruct['EOF']) { return ""; } else { $pos = strpos($CSVstruct['File'], $CSVstruct['OutEOL'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); if ($pos===false) { $CSVstruct['EOF'] = true; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); } else { $pos1 = $CSVstruct['Seek']; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = $pos+1; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$pos1,$pos-$pos1); }; }; } /** Initialize ad_network variable */ $ad_logic = new ad_logic($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); $ad_network = $ad_logic->ad_network($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); ?>