When Google bought YouTube, it was not clear whether the decision would be wise in the long term or not. That’s why we excluded it from our list of Web M&A deals in our Top 10 Web M&A deals of all time.
Today we find out that Myspace is doubling up efforts to go after YouTube. But some stats from HitWise suggest the Google deal wasn’t too shabby:
“As of May 2007, YouTube’s market share was 50 percent greater than those 64 sites combined,” Hitwise research director LeeAnn Prescott said in a summary of her firm’s data.
YouTube’s share of the U.S. online video market was 60.2 percent in May, according to Hitwise. Its closest rival, News Corp.’s MySpace Videos site, had 16.08 percent of market share, the survey of Web surfing habits showed.
YouTube’s sister site, Google Video, held 7.81 percent, while Yahoo Inc. had 2.77 percent and Microsoft Corp.’s MSN, 2.09 percent, according to the study.
Start-up Metacafe ranked No. 8 in U.S. visitors to video sites with 1.07 percent, Time Warner’s AOL Media had 0.94 percent and Veoh was No. 10 at 0.86 percent, Hitwise said.
So let me get this straight: Google commands over 50% market share in BOTH search and video? Yikes.
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