Today in China

YouTube’s co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen and their 65 employees must be quite excited and happy about this acquisition. What about us, poor users?

Both YouTube and Google provide online videos for the Internet users all over the world… All over the world? Not really… If you go to the Google Video Website from China and try to watch a video, you will have the unpleasant surprise to get the following message:

Thanks for your interest in Google Video.
Currently, the playback feature of Google Video isn’t available in your country.
We hope to make this feature available more widely in the future, and we really appreciate your patience.

So far, YouTube was providing a good - if not better - alternative to Google for the Chinese Netizens. I hope - I mean… I really, really hope - that it will stay like that after this acquisition. According to a Google Statement, YouTube will continue to operate independently with its headquarters in San Bruno, California. Let’s see…

Source:
People’s Daily Online - 2006 10 10

Links:
YouTube
Google Videos