Greed + Fear + GooTubey Ad Servers
The impressive thing about "that (billion dollar) deal" which is even getting mainstream media coverage downunder, is that the company started in February 2005. As an entrepreneur who started blogging the month before that, and then a few months later started a company, that is a blueprint on building a successful franchise in this space.
It also cant help but make you feel a little stupid. But also glad that a real deal validates the space (skype was about the telco market) If VC (and M+A) is driven by greed and fear, the Gooey Tube et Skype got their "disruptive" business models spot on. These are rare companies that disrupt an industry, and are sustainable. (the greed of the copyright holders and their inability to monetise content will mean lots more big dell/fox/aol deals, but with studios, labels, artists etc.
Steve Ballmer, at the other end of the large cap tech company continuum, is a tad disturbed by the whole thing (scoble is dead right about that whole "not built here" mentality which is holding them back - imagine Microsoft bought these properties early 2005 when Scoble would write public letters to Bill Gate to acquire these new social media assets) Anyway back to Ballmer in BusinessWeek :
"That MySpace deal (where Google provides the ad engine for MySpace). We bid a lot of money on that MySpace deal. And we got outbid. We wanted to win that MySpace (NWS) deal. At some point, we said we can't do this. Now Google can afford to spend more than us and Yahoo because they have more people in their ad system, so they're getting better yield, effectively."
It also cant help but make you feel a little stupid. But also glad that a real deal validates the space (skype was about the telco market) If VC (and M+A) is driven by greed and fear, the Gooey Tube et Skype got their "disruptive" business models spot on. These are rare companies that disrupt an industry, and are sustainable. (the greed of the copyright holders and their inability to monetise content will mean lots more big dell/fox/aol deals, but with studios, labels, artists etc.
Steve Ballmer, at the other end of the large cap tech company continuum, is a tad disturbed by the whole thing (scoble is dead right about that whole "not built here" mentality which is holding them back - imagine Microsoft bought these properties early 2005 when Scoble would write public letters to Bill Gate to acquire these new social media assets) Anyway back to Ballmer in BusinessWeek :
"That MySpace deal (where Google provides the ad engine for MySpace). We bid a lot of money on that MySpace deal. And we got outbid. We wanted to win that MySpace (NWS) deal. At some point, we said we can't do this. Now Google can afford to spend more than us and Yahoo because they have more people in their ad system, so they're getting better yield, effectively."
posted by redbarren at 9:54 AM
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