[tsycho]

I see this oft repeated comment about Google acquiring YouTube, DoubleClick and Android. Yes they did. But the companies they acquired were tiny upstarts, which might have even died on their own. Google built them into what they are today, and deserve 90% of the credit for their current significance.

The same applies to FB and Instagram as well, fwiw. Though imo, not as much for WhatsApp, which already had 400MM users and would have organically reached 1B+ users on its own.

[john-radio]

YouTube was delivering an average of 100 million video views per day in July 2006, months before the Google acquisition for $1,650,000,000 that same year. It's inaccurate to characterize them as a "tiny startup."

[sam0x17]

Likewise doubleclick was HUGE in the ad space I remember seeing all the doubleclick.com urls in slow page loads

[FlyMoreRockets]

How many views per day does YouTube now deliver per day?

[athms]

>It's inaccurate to characterize them as a "tiny startup."

YouTube had 65 employees when they were acquired.

I do agree that they were not a startup. This word should only be used for companies that are starting up; getting their legal structure together, hiring, and initial R&D. Once you are offering widgets (ad space), you are no longer a startup. Profitability is immaterial to startup status.

[Judgmentality]

Why does the number of employees matter? If anything that's a testament to how valuable they were, to be able to do so much with so little.

[athms]

It doesn't. My comment was about the word tiny" and 65 is tiny especially when compared to Google.

[ulfw]

And Instagram had like what... 8?

Not every company that's successful and has millions of users needs to have a bloated org

[romanoderoma]

WhatsApp had 55 employees before FB acquisition

[redisman]

I'm sorry are you joking? You do realize DoubleClick had it's IPO 10 years before Google bought them?

[akiselev]

YouTube saw the writing on the wall early - Google's capital allowed them to scale without paywalling or drowning viewers in advertisements like they are now.

The Android acquisition is a redherring - manufacturers started adopting Android en mass because it was royalty free(ish) and they had to compete against Apple's new app store mostly with feature phone OSes entirely unfit for the job.

Neither Youtube nor Google's selfless "donation" to the consumer electronics industry would have been possible without the ad business. IANAL but that looks like textbook predatory pricing (and in Android's case, can't be defended by pointing at Apple, since they don't participate in the smartphone OS market).