I saw the GooTube acquisition hit the news last night but I was too busy to post about it. I guess I need to eat crow on part of my prediction: “It will waft in a terrible state of semi-relevance before being acquired”.
There’s still the possibility that the second half of my prediction will hold: “Within its new parent company, YouTube as we know it will die either from neglect or being rolled into some larger service or portal”. Time will tell. For now it looks like Google is going to leave YouTube on a pretty long leash and maintain the brand.
Now that there are such deep pockets behind YouTube, copyright holders are going to come out of the woodwork looking for money. But the saving grace for YouTube will be all the deals that are being cut these days with the major content providers. But all that legitimacy will fundamentally change YouTube. It should be fun to watch this evolve.
The YouTube founders posted a message yesterday on YouTube (of course): http://youtube.com/watch?v=QCVxQ_3Ejkg. It is drivel for the first minute but it ends in proper YouTube style.