14 DAY TRIAL // YouTube was acquired in October 2006 for $1.6 billion, one of the biggest investments ever made for an online company. At that time, the analysts sustained the search giant will manage to pay off the investment quickly because the Mountain View-based firm is able to attract an important number of users. Soon after the acquisition, the online video sharing service started to cause more and more problems for the parent company that made the Internet users sustain the investment was quite useless. It all started with a first major case when Daniela Cicarelli, Ronaldo's ex-wife sued YouTube for copyright infringement, sustaining her clips were published on the page without her authorization. A Brazilian court closed YouTube Brazil and ordered the service to remove all the videos with the model from the database.
The problems continued with more and more lawsuits that accused YouTube for copyright infringement. The most known problem is surely the one concerning Viacom, the MTV owner suing Google for publishing more than 100.000 clips without approval. Although YouTube's employees started to remove the clips, Viacom filed a complaint and required $1 billion in damages. Since the Google acquisition, YouTube is continuously struggling to design a feature that will help the company to avoid copyright cases. Recently, it was announced by Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt sustaining that "Claim Your Content" will be soon available to all uploaders.
However, the Google official sustains the investments has already paid off. Is it possible? I really don't know but if it's true, Google managed it using numerous deals signed by the company. Starting February 2007, YouTube launched a powerful campaign to attract other media firms, announcing partnerships with Chelsea FC, NBA and BBC. Today, the Mountain View-based company's officials sustained that YouTube will roll out some new changes for YouTube that will reveal some 30 seconds adverts displayed at the beginning of every clip posted on the page.