I was shocked that Google bought Youtube for more than a billion dollars last year. How would they benefit from such a multi billion buy out? What profit is there in buying such companies?

That's a darn good question.

Youtube's value lies in the fact that it is the market leader of online video sites, and gets a TON of traffic.

Google was trying to compete with Google Video, and since Google could automatically become the market leader by buying out Youtube, that was probably the reasoning behind it. The question is, will they ever be able to recover the money from it? Not directly, I'm guessing, but it is a huge shot in the arm of content (that is searchable through Google), and therefore helps to keep Google atop the world in searching for internet content. Which in turn generates ad revenue.

It's hard to imagine that they could make the money back with the limited advertising that they do on the Youtube pages, but they might also have paid placement schemes in the works, similar to what they do on the Google pages.

Pete

__________________
Reverend Pete
Code Of Paint
Learn to program using Flash

Have you heard any more about the lawsuit involving Google and YouTube?

I think it was started by Viacom, wasn't it?

I think there are quite a number of lawsuits leveled at YouTube at the moment. But nothing that Google wasn't aware of. Here is an interesting blog about that very thing. Some of it may be speculation, but it is interesting anyway.

Google is no stranger to lawsuits like this - look at the furor over being able to search the content of entire books!

Pete

__________________
Reverend Pete
Code Of Paint
Learn to program using Flash

I am curious about the outcome of the lawsuit, since there are so many file and video sharing communities out there. I am surprised networks aren't finding a way to attach commercials to their own programs and release them for more revenue. ABC is doing this on a moderate scale, and I'd love to see if it's working.

youtube was making some cooool money off adsense so maybe google decided to go for a 100% share of the money .
Between , google has smart employees and they are experienced and are not dumb so they must be having some plans/ways in there mind to monetize the youtube and to make a profit off the deal .

btw google has recently purchased doubleclick aswell

__________________
Frazzlet Web Directory -=- Web Directories

Don't even think on that way, why did the Google bought Youtube? Youtube was grossing a huge amount of bucks and traffic every day. I tnikk you guys would have remember the fight for acquiring it, between Google and Yahoo. Another thing I think is that Google video launched by Google was not click in the beginning and so they would have thought Youtube will make up the image of Google video, if both merged together. I am sure the merger will happen soon.