By now everyone knows that Google bought YouTube. Most of the discussion I’ve seen has focused around copyright and how Google will now have to deal with lawsuits related to ‘illegal’ videos on the site. The main reason that I’ve heard stated for why Google bough YouTube is to incorporate it’s video ads into the site. So, fixing the legalities of the site and introducing video ads are the only real changes that have been revealed so far. But with such a hot property, how can Google stop there?
The most valuable part of what Google purchased is the user base. With over 100 million hits per day, that’s lots of users on the site. Now just because Google has said that “YouTube will operate independently” doesn’t mean that it can’t or won’t introduce more than just ad technology into the YouTube site. I would bet that Google will start by allowing Google Accounts to work on YouTube. After that, perhaps YouTube accounts will somehow be merged into Google Accounts. This would mean that all those YouTube users could now get access to the other Google services. Perhaps instant messaging is introduced to the site, with GoogleTalk as the underlying technology of course. What about YouTube e-mail? Powered via Gmail for Domains of course.
Done slowly and with the right unobtrusiveness, Google could absorb this new user base into the rest of it’s services, greatly expand their ad viewing opportunities, and help to start paying back that $1.65 billion they spent…
