Google and YouTube: The Purhcase of an Audience over Technology

I missed this post yesterday, but Google apparently has struck deals with Sony BMG and Warner Music Group. Two more groups to add to Universial and CBS, thanks to the aquisition of YouTube. I find it interesting that, as of this post, there still hasn't been a mention on the GoogleBlog about the YouTube acquisition. I've read about it everywhere else, major and minor publications, but not on the GoogleBlog where they announce just about everything and anything relating to Google.

But anyway. Copyright issues are probably the least of Google's worries, and in an indirect sense you can say they have been given a boost overseas thanks to the UK, whose High Court slackened on its world-famous strict libel laws. But that's a completely seperate issue, and one not discussed much in terms of Internet content, at least not yet.

Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Johnson in his column raises the issue of coolness. Rather, will YouTube as part of Google be able to keep its audience happy and keep growing?

Mr. Johnson makes an important point, and one that I am curious to watch as it develops, is that Google didn't purchase technology but rather an audience, much like Rupert Murdoch did when he bought MySpace. Purchasing an audience over technology raises an interesting dynamic. It turns people like you and me into commodities, things to be bought and sold by people whom we have never met, probably never will meet and assume a good of information about us.

How interesting. We've almost become like cattle, herded here or there, bought and sold by others and later taken to the slaughter house to end up on the dinner table. Even after reading books about globalization, it didn't really occur to me that people, human beings, are very much like commodities. Someone will argue it has been that way since advertising was invented, but with advetising you had the choice of where to put your loyalty, you had a choice, the advertisers were catering to you. That seems reversed with Google's purchase of YouTube. An entire farm and all its cattle has been bought.

So how will the new farm owner keep the cattle happy?