YouTube - Ein schwerer Klotz am Bein von Google?

YouTube kommt einfach nicht aus den negativen Schlagzeilen. Erst die geplatzen Deals mit Rechteinhabern, nun der Analysten Kommentar, dass YouTube im gesamten Jahr 2006 nur lächerliche 15 Millionen Dollar an Einnahmen generiert hat. Dem gegenüber steht unter anderem die Summe von 1650 Millionen, die Google für YouTube bekannterweise in Form von Aktien auf den Tisch gelegt hatte.

clipped from dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com A tidbit in a regulatory filing late last week revealed that Google paid a whopping 100 times revenues for the video-sharing Web site YouTube. Perhaps more remarkable than the sticker shock, however, was the rhetoric employed by Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, to justify the deal. “If you can build a sustainable eyeball business, you can always find clever ways to monetize it,” Mr. Schmidt told a group of investors Tuesday. Many an Internet executive uttered that sentence, or a variation of it, in the late 1990’s, only to eat his or her words a few years later. “YouTube has ended up being a management, operational and legal overhead and a drag,” analyst Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research told the Red Herring. Mr. Schmidt has acknowledged the media companies’ concerns, while it may be awhile before YouTube’s value becomes apparent, it is by far the most popular video-sharing site. Eventually, he suggested, those “eyeballs” will represent real money.