Russell Shaw of ZDNet pegs YouTube's market value at around $1 billion. Will the company stay private, go public, become acquired, or acquire another company? Shaw seems reasonably certain that
YouTube will be scooped up by one of six Internet media majors. In order of their suitability from least to most suitable: First, Adobe systems. The biggest stretch on his list makes sense. YouTube
uses its Flash format for most of its videos. This would be a huge promotional platform for Flash, which lacks the distribution of other major video formats. Time Warner-AOL is next. AOL would be a
great distribution channel for YouTube. Its new services-based business model would benefit greatly from the added traffic and integration with its other video offerings. Third is Sony. It's perhaps
the premiere company in content distribution and video hardware. Sony also owns a movie studio. Fourth, Google. It has plenty of cash, and needs to do something if it's serious about competing in
online video. Search integration would be interesting, too. Fifth, News Corp.'s MySpace and YouTube are already natural allies, and to add a video dimension to the world's largest social network means
that people could spend consecutive days at its sites. Finally, Shaw says Yahoo would be the most suitable for YouTube. It owns Flickr, the best photo-sharing site. Yahoo could also syndicate YouTube
content; it needs something like a key acquisition to boost its share price.
Read the whole story at ZDNet Blog »