Dec 29, 2006 01:05 PM
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San Francisco, 1:49 AM
Wed Feb 10
55 posts in the last 24 hours
Google's acquisition of Youtube was always a mixed blessing for other video sharing sites. On the one hand, it established an elevated price benchmark, and set Google's comptitors into a frenzy. On the other hand, the deal set off an even more overwhelming rush to sell, before bandwidth costs ate up the video startups' funding. And it became hard to see companies such as Metacafe and Grouper as anything other than leftovers. Leftovers that are now beginning to go off. Grouper was smart to sell to Sony in September while media companies were still in full panic mode. But Metacafe's negotiations with Yahoo have been dragging on, without conclusion. And now comes an extraordinarily blunt admission by Guba's founder that execs are leaving the company:
"I think we can all acknowledge that YouTube has won the big prize. The billion-dollar opportunity has kind of passed. They are bright, and they're interested in going for the gold."
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