So TechCrunch report that there is a 40% chance that a rumour has been confirmed that a rumour exists about venture capitalists and tycoons are mentioning that Google might buy YouTube for $1.6B.
Now rumour aside let’s say that this happens. A comment on the posting by Jeffrey says that this values YouTube at $67.51 per registered user. Note that not everyone registered on YouTube actively puts up content and not all of those people visit the site regularly. YouTube is certainly not as focused as MySpace is on the market for upcoming bands etc. Although the lonelygirl15 publicity that YouTube garnered (even quoted on the Daily Show a few times) clearly did an awful lot for both YouTube and as an experiment for viral video marketing and actually for the career of Jessica Rose. I suppose only time will tell if she becomes a real star.
Jason Baptiste posts a comment on the blog post about how Google might actually use the purchase. He says that Google would likely use the brand and reach of YouTube and couple it with Apple’s future iTV delivery mechanism into homes. I must admit that this sounds like a terrific strategy. Targeted video ads is clearly what’s coming next. All ready you have to sit through some rubbish adverts when watching snippits of news on MSN video and even on videos of new games on sites like ign.com before I get to my desired content. Seth Godin always goes on about the ‘is this about me?’ factor in marketing. Perhaps this is the best of all mashups. Gootube, maybe? 
Michael Arrington of TechCrunch has taken some flack about this posting. Some commentators have said that the posting being an unstantiated rumour is simply to drive content and links to the site. Yes, TechCrunch has seen it’s number of RSS subscribers grow considerably in recent weeks (20,000 or so in the last few days by the looks of it). I went to visit the site, I read the article and it made me think. If it’s true then complete kudos to Michael. If it’s not, then it was a unstantiated rumour as he said. It’s newsworthy and it doesn’t nothing to tarnish the credibility of TechCrunch.