Google and You Tube

Today’s news that Google has purchased YouTube for US$1.65 billion is a good reminder of how a quality product can beat a good brand on the Internet.

We saw this with Google itself. Prior to Google most people used Alta Vista for searches. It si now basically defunct.

Google has many great products. But last year when they launched Google Video, their site wasn’t that great. You Tube on the other hand had better features, better viewing, great use of tags etc and within months almost everyone was using You Tube instead of Google Video.

This is the great thing about the Internet. Quality is rewarded. You can produce the bets hamburger in the world but you won’t overtake McDonalds for market share without a couple of decades to spare and a huge marketing budget. On the Net market share can flow and ebb within weeks.

You Tube has 100 million (yes million) video clipes viewed a day, with an additional 65,000 also added on daily. Juha estimates their bandwidth is 200 terabytes a day!

Anyway the three founders who set this up are now all massively rich – because thay had an idea and a vision and followed it through. Capitalism at work 🙂