Apple-YouTube deal: farfetched or not?

Not a bad idea if you look at it like this. YouTube, as we know it, is going to be a dead duck soon anyway. It won't be long before it is forced to go the way of Napster. The only things that is saving it is that (1) all the major media companies don't want another public backlash like the one from mangling the oh so loved Napster, (2) actually legally going after Joe & Jane copyright infringing downloaders and finally... (3) they simply dont have the programming you find on YouTube available and ready-to-go for downloading. Video is where the big revenues are increasingly coming from and they are not going to let you watch the entire 3rd season of Entourage if you don't pay HBO & Comcast to do it for much longer. YouTube will have to become a pay-per-view/subscription service or only have true individually owned un-copyrighted content on there. The alternative is to move it's servers to the lunar surface where I believe the international copyrighted material laws don't apply. In anycase, if iTunes did acquire YouTube, they would have the advantage of having statistics and trends that are vital in determining what programming people are watching and use that as a model of what should be rolled out first in a HD downloadable format. That in itself is priceless from a sales stand-point. If there are popular clips from Seinfeld that are downloaded frequently. They would have a "clip" or "scene" area where you'll pay .99 or something to d/l just that small segment. I know there's iTunes but to have an established and incresingly popular web portal at your disposal does matter. I feel it could work if the inevitable copyrighted material demise of YouTube happens. Just change the name to iTube and make it work Steve.

Good Job, Dave, now everyone will know about it!!! SHEESH!

This makes no sense.

I'm not sure what YouTube could offer Apple that they already couldn't do themselves with iTunes.

Is it just me or is anyone else tired of hearing how every company has the next “i-Pod Killer”. God forbid Apple should has some much deserved success.

If other companies weren’t asleep at the wheel thinking of the i-Pods success as being directly linked to the i-Pod itself, but rather put more thought about how beautifully Apple delivers content with iTunes, other companies might actually compete against it.

One other thought, if iTunes can already handle streaming internet radio, how far away could Apple be from adding a source icon for live IPTV. Let’s watch these snoozing companies chase the success of that!

The videos aren't encoded into flash videos. Flash just serves as a wrapper. I upload all of my files in h.264 quicktime. All they do is embed the quicktime file in flash.

There's just no way that Steve will create a source for iPod-ready video that abandons the iTunes empire.

Quick exercise: Watch any YouTube video. Then, watch an iTMS video. H264 rules.

If the YouTube VCs are looking for a sugar-daddy to buy them out, they really should be talking to Ballmer, not SJ. Nobody with any taste or any business sense is going to buy that turd and try to polish it up.

-jcr

No, Apple doesn't need YouTube. The quality level of YouTube isn't high enough for Apple. Furthermore YouTube has absolutely no style or culture. Look at the website color scheme. Gray and standard blue links; as if a Microsoft "designer" would have created it.

Well... Apple doesn't actually have to buy YT, it just has to have a partnership with YT. Something like google does with the whole "download to iPod" sort of thing would do. Being able to save YT videos for the video iPod would give some of those video iPod users something shorter that won't drain their battery as much as a movie or TV show but still be enjoyable to watch.

There's no way you can sell YT videos, but adding the video blogs by those YT celebs to the iTMS could also work.

No. YouTube has no class or style. 100% in the opposite direction of Apple products and services.

If you want to read what Jobs himself has to say about it, just read his blog.

http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2006/08/everybodys-got-advice.html

Huh? Why would Apple have any interest at all in YouTube? I've been reading that YouTube will be offering all music videos for free, posing competition to Apple. I say "whoop de doo." Couldn't Apple do the same with a few keystrokes? Of course they could. If the media companies allowed YouTube to do it, they'd certainly allow Apple to do it too.

I like YouTube as much as the next guy, but I don't see it as a potential asset to Apple.