> and were thinking about a acq with Yahoo
> and it would be nice for y! not to have them
> their content quality is worse than ours ... if we pick them up it would be defensive vs yahoo
> I think we should talk to them, if nothing else to make it more expensive for Yahoo
You don't make statements like that and then explain it with "It didn't seem like they would scale and we don't have enough devs". The decision on if the buy YouTube or not (or another video company), was clearly influenced by the "risk" of Yahoo buying the very same company.
Given that Y! was considering buying YouTube, the probability that a similar set of emails was written on Yahoo’s end is approximately 1.
IMO, that’s because they were also competing with Google. Is everyone in that market acting anti-competitively? What would that even mean (absent collusion)?
Given that YouTube has not been killed and Google has heavily invested in it and there were some legal minefields with Youtubes content early on that Google would then take on, I think it’s reasonable to conclude that they didn’t acquire it just to mess with Yahoo
Google only generates revenue to deny their competition that money! Their sole reason to exist is to be anti-competitive! Every time they breathe they're being anti-competitive.
They are literally talking about making a decision on the basis of eliminating a competitor from the market via a purchase they thought might have little/no other value. I think that is a reasonable working definition for examples if anti-competitive behavior.
We don't see antitrust lawsuits for a variety of reasons. One of which is that they are extremely resource intensive to fight since by definition they tend to be fought against massive corporations. When the feds can go after 50 other cases for the cost of going after a single massive company, that's a hard sell.
As to purchasing a competitor: Sure, if you're purchasing it because it adds to your capabilities then it seems fairly straightforward. That's not what we see here. Here, we have an example of purchasing them when, at this stage, Google saw little or no value in it except as a means to limit competition.
You're interpreting the email screenshots incorrectly. I think you need to carefully re-read them and mentally note that there are _2_ different people expressing 2 different opinions: Jeff Huber & [redacted].
- Jeff Huber (Google Ads team): he initially brings up the question about a Youtube acquisition and sees them as additive to Google because he sees their team iterating on new features faster. He perceives the Youtube team as a "passionate" bunch. He also sees value in getting Youtube's assets and existing deals if Google buys them. Jeff sees synergy with buying them because he predicts that Youtube will eventually need a more scalable backend (think of Google's big datacenters) -- and monetization... and as a convenient coincidence... Jeff is in the ads team.
- [redacted] (Google Video team): he pushes back because he thinks his Google Video team will eventually build the same Youtube features anyway by 4th quarter. He's the one who wrote Google acquisition of Youtube purchase would be "defensive".
You're giving too much weight to one person's opinion ([redacted]). However, PC is not the ultimate decision maker for Google to buy Youtube.
Maybe we can use some common sense about [redacted]'s perspective. If [redacted] were to wholeheartedly agree with Jeff Huber, that would mean.... he's admitting that he & his team are not competing as well as those Youtube guys. So it would be understandable human nature for him to think the Youtube acquisition would accomplish nothing but take them away from Yahoo.
It looks like Jeff Huber (and later Susan Wojcicki) championed buying Youtube because of the value there. It seems that [redacted]'s opinion was discounted or ignored. You don't have war meetings about the risks of fighting the multi-million dollar lawsuit with Viacom as a consequence of buying Youtube, and then subsidizing Youtube's money-losing business for years if you saw no value in them.
They're saying it's nothing special-- they're not aware of a significant talent pool and there are "no big video brains".
From there, the first two reasons stated for actual consideration in acquiring YouTube are as a defense or because even talking to them will make it more expensive for someone else to acquire them.
But that doesn't change much about this story: what does it matter that they note features-- already on Google's roadmap-- when they then, as their stated reason for actually buying YouTube, is as a defensive move?
Basically: "YouTube has some nice features but we're already building them and just want the company so Yahoo can't have them."
That doesn't make this picture look any better for Google.
That's not what it says. If you want to go that basic:
"Youtube is doing better at innovating here than us, but we have some stuff they don't, and if we acquired them we'd get the best of both worlds and deny it to Yahoo"
Even if you make the case this only anti-competitive there is nothing wrong with that behaviour by 2005 Google. It's not illegal or even significant in anyway.
I don't get it, that first paragraph describes just about every startup ever. And I'm sure had Yahoo acquired it, it would have been "re-built using Yahoo's distributed systems infrastructure and software". Don't you know it, they would have updated the letterhead too!
I think you're forgetting the state of the web in 2005.
The tech to do on the fly pre-roll and mid-roll ads in an existing video didn't exist in 2005, there was no significant market for video advertising on the web in 2005, and web browsers could not play video at all. It was all plugin based. There was no streaming standard. There was no way to circumvent banner ad blocking, too. Sure, that new thing Web 2.0 might help, and XHTML 2 sounds promising, but it's not there yet. To top it off, the main way most users -- even Americans -- connected to the internet in 2005 was still dial-up! So you're a niche market, too.
If your model is "just use ads" then the 2005 response is "okay, but how do you sell dynamic ad views in videos with maybe a couple thousand views? And how do they work?"
YouTube would have suffered a far worse fate in the hands of the extra special incompetent Yahoo organization.
While I might like to see YouTube spun out of Google, Google is the primary reason it survived. Along with bleeding to death financially as one likely outcome, YouTube was going to get sued into oblivion. Google shielded them in terms of liability because Google was fearsome enough to intimidate the overly lawsuit-happy savages in Hollywood and the music industry. That delayed the reckoning that was coming for YouTube in regards to the content on their platform that was under copyright by major media publishers (music in particular). There were dozens of prominent articles written about that specific context back in those years.
What you then see in the thread is someone else saying: yeah we’re going to catch up, we just need a couple of more devs.
And then the counterpoint that well, even if Google doesn’t end up doing it, at least it makes it harder for Yahoo.
The original motivation isn’t just to make it harder for Yahoo. It’s that Huber wants to bring these people on board because they are really good at innovating, and Google can help make it really successful. But there was some pushback, and then other reasons were presented to continue with the conversation.
At these companies (any company?), sometimes to get what you want you have to present a diverse set of reasons, even if only one of them is the principal reason why you want to do something.
Note: I work for Google.