With YouTube, Google puts its competitors in a jam

With YouTube, Google puts its competitors in a jam
Build off what they have, or buy a second-tier site? For Microsoft and Yahoo, there's no easy way to make the Internet video market a horse race.
By Elinor Mills and Greg Sandoval
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Published: October 10, 2006, 3:35 PM PDT
With its planned $1.65 billion acquisition of the video sharing Web site YouTube, Google may well have its big Internet search competitors in a jam.

Video from YouTube Founders


YouTube has a 45 percent share of the online video market, which is more than its top four competitors combined, according to market trackers at Hitwise. It has mainstream cachet, as page one stories about the impending Google deal in both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal aptly demonstrated. And, not even two years old, it has a start-up momentum unheard of in any Internet company not named Google.