Scoble has been talking about Microsoft’s engineering culture recently.
Don’t miss Ballmer’s question here: “[You’ve got to ask] could Google do whatever it is they’re hoping to buy without paying $1.6 billion?” That’s Microsoft’s engineering culture coming through. Clearly Ballmer believes he can build YouTube for less.
Engineering culture is just another word for pride. Arrogance. Why try and beat the people who are clearly the best? Why try and beat people at a game you’ve never played when that’s all your competition plays?
Ballmer is right, you could easily build YouTube for less. You could probably build it better for less. The technology was nowhere close to worth 1.6 Billion dollars.
However – the addicted user base, culture, and brand it created may be. That has yet to be seen.
http://notrapshere.ytmnd.com/
I think a couple of dedicated geeks could rebuild YouTube for peanuts, sans bandwidth considerations.
Scott is right on about the branding and user base, too. ..Which leads me to how I was thinking of it: $1.6 billion might be a small price to pay to /have no competition/.