The crowd-sourced mobile traffic advisory device and navigation service was acquired five years later by Google, whose own Google Maps app was already seven years old by that time. Acquiring Waze was one way to eliminate competition, but Google also saw Waze’s traffic-updating features as novel enhancements to Google Maps. Google closed the Fitbit buyout in January 2021 after the deal was first announced in November 2019, adding to its wearable device lineup following its acquisition of the Timex smartwatch technology in 2019.
- Who are YouTube’s founders, and what are some of the YouTube’s essential milestones?
- Established media corporations such as Disney, Paramount, NBCUniversal, and Warner Bros.
- The group discussed whether it made sense to look to larger companies for an acquisition, companies who had the resources to negotiate deals and solve infrastructure issues — a company with the “really blunt instrument” of a lot of people and a lot of money, Yu said.
- Since its launch, YouTube has greatly impacted how we consume and share information.
- In June 2021, FireEye sold its FireEye branded products business and name to the private equity firm Symphony Technology Group for $1.2 billion—leaving the Mandiant Solutions software business in the publicly traded company.
As of February 2017[update], there were more than 400 hours of content uploaded to YouTube each minute, and one billion hours of content being watched on YouTube every day. YouTube is a significant hub among online platforms, with an astonishing 2 billion active users worldwide. Every day, people watch billions of hours of videos on YouTube, making it a major part of our lives. As such, the platform offers a wide variety of user-generated and corporate media videos.
One last chance for Google
Google has since been able to monetize the service by selling ad services to businesses, including ads that alert drivers when they are near participating businesses. Waze had over 140 million monthly active users in early 2021—up from 10 million when it was acquired. Most of the early YouTube employees noticed only minor changes to their life, especially at first. Google added its mini convenience-stores to YouTube’s office, where employees could access as many free packs of gum and soft drinks as they wanted. Yu Pan, YouTube’s employee No. 1, noticed that the company parties got better. The day after the acquisition was announced, the staff got to have a catered lunch of Subway sandwiches, according to Gideon Yu.
In the video, a clearly giddy Hurley and Chen, dressed in blazers, announced the sale and thanked the community of creators. While some YouTube employees were in-the-know about the acquisition, others, like Misty Ewing-Davis, a content moderator, weren’t clued in. The employees expected that Monday would be consumed by the office move, not a life-changing acquisition. Many of the employees were dressed in what Ewing-Davis described as “grubby clothes,” since the team was planning to spend the day figuring out the new seating plan and assembling desks. On top of that, YouTube was scrambling to avoid being seen as another Napster-like company. So much content owned by music labels and movie studios was showing up on YouTube that the employees couldn’t take it down fast enough.
Drummond and Yu, still shaking from the experience, signed the papers and went home, their respective companies celebrating for different reasons. Google, for acquiring what would become one of the most valuable parts of its growing empire. The company, only 18 months old at that point, was fending off potentially costly copyright claims and scrambling to support a user base that was growing so quickly, the site’s infrastructure was cracking.
Acquisitions
Alphabet is constantly looking for novel technologies that can enrich its portfolio of businesses. Acquiring smaller companies often eliminates emerging rivals, thus reducing competition for Alphabet. This is one reason Alphabet has faced several antitrust lawsuits filed by the U.S. Botha, the Sequoia partner who served on YouTube’s board, remembers walking into YouTube’s office days after the deal was announced. After a year of getting to know everyone on a first-name basis, he says he was stunned to see new faces staring back at him.
Alphabet Inc. also allows Google to experiment with new industries, such as self-driving cars and artificial intelligence. Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., a holding company that also owns other popular brands such as Google Search, Gmail, and Android. Who are YouTube’s founders, and what are some of the YouTube’s essential milestones? Let’s unfold these questions about a platform that redefined how we share and consume content in this digital age. For the fiscal (and calendar) year 2021, Alphabet reported a net income of $76.033 billion. The annual revenue was $257.6 billion, an increase of 41% over the previous fiscal year.
YouTube, the world’s leading and largest video-sharing platform, has come a long way since its birth in 2005. Acquired by Google in 2006, it has grown over its journey into a global phenomenon. Today, it has billions of users and significantly impacts content creation, consumption, and monetisation. From its humble beginnings as a dating app concept to its current status as part of Alphabet Inc., YouTube’s journey has been marked by various vital milestones and innovations, from which we could make the most remarkable ones. Looker, founded in 2011 by Lloyd Tabb, helps companies to easily extract and analyze data.
The untold story of Google’s $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube, from those who lived it
Google (Alphabet) has acquired about 256 companies in its lifetime. Some recent Google acquisitions have set the stage for the company’s journey into artificial intelligence, robotics, cybersecurity, and more. As part of our effort to improve the awareness of the importance of diversity in companies, we have highlighted the transparency of Google’s (Alphabet’s) commitment to diversity, inclusiveness, and social responsibility. The below chart illustrates how Google (Alphabet) reports the diversity of its management and workforce. This shows if Google (Alphabet) discloses data about the diversity of its board of directors, C-Suite, general management, and employees overall across a variety of markers. DoubleClick was founded in 1996 and became one of the stock-market stars of the dot-com era as a leader in the first generation of online advertising during the 1990s.
Video technology
YouTube launched a web-based version of YouTube Kids on August 30, 2019. Experimental features of YouTube could be accessed in an area of the site formerly named TestTube.[185][186]For example, in October 2009, a comment search feature accessible under /comment_search was implemented as part of this program. TestTube was replaced by a new system that requires users to be premium members to enable or disable experiments. YouTube is a video sharing platform where users around the world stream 694,000 hours of content every minute. Google acquired YouTube in 2006, a little over a year after it began.
It is a platform that offers various features, making it a popular platform for creators and users alike. Here, creators can upload their video content of any length and format. Based on every video upload, you can also add different annotations and captions and use its other features while uploading the videos to make them rank higher. On the other side, users can search and watch videos on any device, including smartphones, computers, tablets and more. YouTube Kids is an American children’s video app developed by YouTube, a subsidiary of Google. The app was developed in response to parental and government scrutiny on the content available to children.
Modern era, continued feature trim down (2019–present)
Advertising is thus a core part of Alphabet’s strategy and has guided many of its acquisition decisions, such as the purchase of DoubleClick in 2008 (see below). Levine described it as a “landmark, first-of-kind” deal, one that would enable YouTube to host user-generated videos that contained music owned by Warner for a share of the ad revenue. Google announced its planned buyout of Looker in June 2019, finalizing the purchase in 2020, leveraging its capabilities through https://www.fx770.net/ the Google Cloud service. At Google Cloud, Looker helps customers accelerate their ability to analyze data, deliver business intelligence, and build data-driven applications. YouTube offers users the ability to view its videos on web pages outside their website. Each YouTube video is accompanied by a piece of HTML that can be used to embed it on any page on the Web.[189] This functionality is often used to embed YouTube videos in social networking pages and blogs.
In February 2022, Microsoft (MSFT) was reportedly interested in buying Mandiant. Google’s $23 per share offer was a 45% premium to the price shares traded for on Feb. 1, 2022 (prior to the Microsoft news). The deal was one of the largest acquisitions in the company’s history—behind only Motorola Mobility, which it purchased in 2012 for $12.5 billion. However, Google also generates revenue from other sources, including sales of apps, in-app purchases, hardware, and licensing and service fees, including those received from Google Cloud and other products. The company offers performance advertising, which allows advertisers to connect with their users with measurable results. It also sells brand advertising, which aims to enhance users’ awareness and affinity with brands.