Podcast #6 - YouTube, YouMail, Audible Audio Books

Google YouTube Deal - $2.6 billion, all in Google stock (thanks to 'everyonesacritic for the correction'), Google now more than 50% of video market (depending on which statistical group you're asking, but a whole lot more than they were before buying Youtube)

Youmail - discussion with our first caller/guest, Matt Youngblood, his experience with this program - Customer support guy from youmail was pretty responsive and interested in helping our guest, Matt Youngblood, with what he needed. (also, the program apparently does work in Mexico and elsewhere, see comment below...)

Matt also shares his insights into IPods, Academik describes the IPhone, and the group discusses the convergence of different types of portable media - music, videos, and voice mails.

Mike shares a little about Google's growing Juggernaut, their deals with huge media companies, the power of their syndicated ad network. This story gives a glimpse into just how powerful Google is becoming, with the following remarks by a top MSFT exec hammering home the point...

"The truth is what Google is doing now is transferring the wealth out of the hands of rights holders into Google. So media companies around the world are all threatened by Google. Why? Because basically Google is telling you how much of your ad revenue you get to keep. They better get some competition. Us. Yahoo!. Somebody better break through or you can short all media stocks right now.

As long as there are two (big companies like Google), you can hold onto media stocks. Google understands that. And that’s one reason why they’re willing to lose money up front. Just look at some of these deals. That MySpace deal (where Google provides the ad engine for MySpace). We bid a lot of money on that MySpace deal. And we got outbid. We wanted to win that MySpace deal. At some point, we said we can’t do this. Now Google can afford to spend more than us and Yahoo..." So how about that...poor MSFT can't even hang in this arena with G.

Anyhoo, one thing we got to thinking about with regards to YouMail - once we can actually have tools that record voice mails we receive, then this begs the next question: what kinds of new services will grow out from this? Will there be social networking sites where individuals can share and rate voice mails that they've received? I also wonder, what kind of privacy chaos will this reap?

Finally, Audible is a rockin' service that gives access to audio book downloads. Has awesome monthly subscriptions, decent collection, clean interface, and small file sizes.