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Digital Maverick Mark Cuban's Thoughts On The Google/YouTube Deal
With a new media deal as huge as yesterday's Google $1.65 billion (in stock) buy of YouTube, very few people are in a position to make comments based on similar experiences. Mark Cuban is in that position. And, boy, does he ever comment on his Blog Maverick.
No doubt, if he were watching Battlestar Galactica on his HDTV when the news was announced, Cuban would have screamed "what the frak!!!" and maybe insulted some officials, too.
He's been on the playing field before -- a decade (!) ago when he sold his Broadcast.com to Yahoo! for a billion; the rest of us Google and YouTube users are just fans in the stands (with a few us a little obnoxiously hectoring the media stars in the game).
What does Mark Cuban think of the Google/YouTube deal? In his words:I still think Google is crazy.
There's LOTS more to read -- how it impacts DRM rules, the deals with music labels, how video content will be re-centralized (possibly making bandwidth much cheaper), how it reconciles selling Sony videos from Google Video when it is free on YouTube, AND how he thinks its "effingreat.com" if no one decides to sue deep-pocketed Google over copyright infringements and what he plans to do if it truly is a whole new world.
Kudos to Youtube for getting them to say yes. My advice to you is to always protect your downside. Ignore all the scammers who want your money, and don't listen to all the tax scammers who want to save you money on taxes. Writing that check is painful, but its the right thing to do. That aside...
It will be interesting to see what happens next and what happens in the copyright world. I still think Google Lawyers will be a busy, busy bunch. I don't think you can sue Google into oblivion, but as others have mentioned, if Google gets nailed one single time for copyright violation, there are going to be more shareholder lawsuits than doans (sic) has pills to go with the pile on copyright suits that follow. Think maybe how Google discloses what they perceive the copyright risk to be in the SEC filings might be an interesting read?
I think there will be supoenas to get the names of Youtube and Google Video users. Lots of them as those copyright owners not part of the gravy train go after both Google and their users for infringement..."
Yes, he's surprised by the deal, even though there are great similarities to his own deal with Yahoo! that made him a very wealthy man. He asks, "Does it open up a whole new world if they go liability free? You have no idea."
From another Cuban post a couple of days ago, "Would Google be crazy to buy Youtube? No doubt about it. Moronic would be an understatement of a lifetime."
Read more of his candid thoughts here.
Meanwhile, we'll keep media trend watching.
posted by Unknown @ Tuesday, October 10, 2006,
1 Comments:
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At 3:39 PM,
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Another question with a resounding yes woudl be "Did Yahoo! pay WAY TOO much for Broadcast.com". Another resounding yes - perhaps for different reasons. But whether Cuban was smart lucky or just lucky lucky is unanswered - and his primary qualification for opining is that he convinced Yahoo to way overpay given the fundamental value of the business. Wereas in this case it is they may have overpaid if the legal issues are not so easily resolved - but YouTube today is worth far more than Broadcast.com was worth at the time. Regardless fo the price tag of about 1/4 of the price.
