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What’s the Difference Between Google Video and YouTube?

Why would Google want to own two video sites? Oh, silly. They’re not two video sites. Their differences are becoming apparent: Google Video Objective: create a video site with no discernible character or features. Keep it as an entirely different entity, and let it stagnate as the market changes. Don’t promote the video site on Google homepage…

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Google Hands Out $50 million checks to Media Companies to “Shut Up and Look the Other Way”

This post could be entirely fictitious, but it’s absolutely fascinating anyway. It’s a fantastic scenario that would explain how Google rationalized the $1.65 purchase of YouTube. The source? Mark Cuban’s anonymous but trusted source — who first posted this theory on the Pho List. Here’s how the saucy story goes: Google actually paid $1.15 billion…

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Coke Embraces Mentos Fad for the First Time

In a marketing decision that always perplexed me, Coke spent the better part of this year distancing itself from a cultural wave involving its product… the geysers resulting from mixing Mentos mints and Diet Coke. The Mentos team jumped on it almost reflexively — running ads behind the famed www.Eepybird.com ads via Revver and initiating…

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Exclusive Confidential Video: Google’s Due Diligence on YouTube

An anonymous source sent me this confidential “YouTube Research by Google” video that was meant for internal use only by Google. I think it’s worth the legal risk of posting, because it gives us insights into what due diligence Google conducted before buying YouTube. Google’s board apparently commissioned ethnographic research of the YouTube community —…

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Comparing and Rating Video Search Engines

While Google/YouTube may change the dynamic of video search, it’s still hopelessly frustrating to find a video online. Wall Street Journal writer Jessica Vascellaro wrote a nice article on video search today. I liked it not just because it was the first time I’ve been mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. The article shows that companies have made significant efforts…

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Google’s Purchase of YouTube Was Defensive

Yesterday’s morning rant about Google/Yahoo seems to have touched on at least one point that is shared by smarter people than me. Google’s gobbling of YouTube was more defensive than offensive. Says Benjamin Schacterof UBS Investment Research in this Dow Jones article by Carmen Fleetwood (thanks Jim for sending). It’s classic blocking. Without inventory, advertisers…

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Google Gulps YouTube… The $1.65 Billion “Crying Game”

Google proposed to YouTube. It reminds me of The Crying Game, only we haven’t gotten to that part in the movie when the camera tilts down to reveal the “secret plot.” Perhaps the most fascinating thing ahead will be to watch what happens to Google Video as the merger works its ways through the legal stages. Hey-…