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>At the time I wrote that post, YouTube was not a real business; [...] The fact that they were forced to sell a business that is now worth $100-150b for $1.6b i

>At the time I wrote that post, YouTube was not a real business; [...] The fact that they were forced to sell a business that is now worth $100-150b for $1.6b is a good indication for how close to the brink of destruction they were. I don't follow this point. How is selling something to Google for $1.6b an indication of being on the brink of destruction? And if the point here is that they were worth a discounted $100b then (so sold undervalued), how can that be the brink of destruction either? Either way I don't follow the author's reasoning here. It sounds like he's saying, "they were REALLY worth a discounted ~$100b, but they were in such dire straits they had to sell for 1.6% of that." But that contradicts his point that it wasn't a 'real' business. So either way, I don't see how that sentence supports the point he is making.

adventured 12y ago
Not to mention he missed by a mile on the valuation estimate. YouTube isn't worth anywhere near $100b-$150b. Netflix has a better business model, a track-record of profitability, more revenue and nearly 60 million paying subscribers. It's worth $33 billion by comparison (and is itself carrying a hyper valuation at 100-200 times earnings typically). Netflix is the general ceiling on YouTube's valuation.
- logicallee 12y ago
  Yes, I agree and had an objection to that number in my first edit. It's obvious that YouTube isn't worth anywhere near $100B. What made me remove it is that Google itself is valued at 371B, so the idea that YouTube constitutes 26% of that valuation is something in the realm of what someone could defend. (To compare with your numbers, YouTube.com is the third-most visited site on the planet, after Google.com and Facebook.com [1][2] and has "more than 1 billion users" [3] along with 50% monthly growth according to that page. Since YouTube isn't in the same business as Netflix (VOD), it's hard to use that as a cap on its valuation.) The author's valuation of YouTube today is probably still inflated by a large multiple. You suggest a cap on YouTube of 8.9% of Google's valuation ($33B), perhaps that's fair, but it's hard to say as it's not an independent business. [1] http://www.alexa.com/topsites http://www.alexa.com/topsites [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites [3] https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html

adventured 12y ago

Not to mention he missed by a mile on the valuation estimate. YouTube isn't worth anywhere near $100b-$150b. Netflix has a better business model, a track-record of profitability, more revenue and nearly 60 million paying subscribers. It's worth $33 billion by comparison (and is itself carrying a hyper valuation at 100-200 times earnings typically). Netflix is the general ceiling on YouTube's valuation.

logicallee 12y ago
Yes, I agree and had an objection to that number in my first edit. It's obvious that YouTube isn't worth anywhere near $100B. What made me remove it is that Google itself is valued at 371B, so the idea that YouTube constitutes 26% of that valuation is something in the realm of what someone could defend. (To compare with your numbers, YouTube.com is the third-most visited site on the planet, after Google.com and Facebook.com [1][2] and has "more than 1 billion users" [3] along with 50% monthly growth according to that page. Since YouTube isn't in the same business as Netflix (VOD), it's hard to use that as a cap on its valuation.) The author's valuation of YouTube today is probably still inflated by a large multiple. You suggest a cap on YouTube of 8.9% of Google's valuation ($33B), perhaps that's fair, but it's hard to say as it's not an independent business. [1] http://www.alexa.com/topsites http://www.alexa.com/topsites [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites [3] https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html