Tag Archives: Ron Amadeo

Cheaper bandwidth or bust: How Google saved YouTube

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On October 9, 2006, Google bought the then year-and-a-half-old YouTube for a staggering $1.65 billion. It was Google’s biggest acquisition to date by $1.55 billion. Google bought a very popular site that was very expensive to run and lacked a business model. It was staring down potentially billions in lawsuits from music, movie, and TV companies—and Google did it anyway.

In hindsight, Google and YouTube were a match made in heaven. Google, which already ran Google Search, AdWords/AdSense, Gmail, Google Maps, Google News, and Blogger, brought tons of big-site know-how to YouTube. It had the infrastructure to not only keep the site growing, but Google could reduce its costs. – Ron Amadeo, Ars Technica

(Full Story:http://ift.tt/1I7aXXd)

Report: Google Wireless cellular announcement is imminent

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Google will have a hard time being “disruptive” when it’s only reselling someone else’s service. Any Sprint and T-Mobile MVNO would be at the mercy of… Sprint and T-Mobile. Google Fiber is disruptive because Google is using a different data delivery technology—fiber optic—and doing all the hard work of ground-up network building, which gives it full control over everything. By owning everything, Google can sell high speeds for low prices, and shake up the competition in cities it offers service. Reselling service on Sprint and T-Mobile’s existing networks doesn’t leave that much room to be different. Some customers might have a lower bill, but we don’t see how it will be the “10x” improvement Google usually shoots for. – Ron Amadeo, Ars Technica

YouTube says HTML5 video ready for primetime, makes it default

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Everyone hates Flash, right? You have to install a plug-in, it’s resource intensive, it doesn’t work on mobile, and it causes all sorts of security problems. YouTube has been working on ridding itself of Adobe’s ancient Web plug-in for several years now, and while the whole site has been slowly transitioning away from Flash, today YouTube announced that it finally serves HTML5 video by default. Users of Chrome, IE 11, Safari 8, and “beta versions of Firefox” will all have a Flash-less experience. – Ron Amadeo, Ars Technica 
(Full Story: http://ift.tt/15GQV6c )

Adobe brings “streaming” Photoshop to Chrome OS

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If you deal with photos at all, Chrome OS has mostly been a non-starter because it has been missing one crucial piece of software: Adobe Photoshop. Today, Google and Adobe are finally fixing that situation, bringing Photoshop to Chrome OS. […] ,this is just a beta project. Initially it’s only going to be available to “US-based Adobe education customers with a paid Creative Cloud membership.” Photoshop won’t be a local app; it will be a “streaming version” of Photoshop. – Ron Amadeo,Ars Technica
(Full Story: http://ift.tt/1rw2u6D )