matthew ogston: social publisher

As reported over on Guardian Unlimited, Google are reported to be in talks with the board of YouTube, the web’s most popular and controversial talked about social video sharing work. In a deal that could be worth over £800 million, YouTube would become part of the Google family and effectively merge into the existing Google Video service. It’s too early to tell if the YouTube brand would remain intact if the deal went ahead, but judging from previous Google acquisitions from the same marketing space (Orkut), the YouTube brand has a good chance of surviving.