Google Forces YouTube Account Linking

When Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion, there was a lot of speculation as to how the search brand would leverage its new popular, if volatile, property. Would Google be named as part of copyright suits?

By 2008, YouTube's developing ad endeavors translated to $200 million in revenue. By 2010, the video portal was live-streaming athletic events and serving around 2 billion videos a day. It was, for all practical purposes, the world's most popular on-demand TV network — and the second biggest search engine on the planet, after its parent. In October, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley stepped down as CEO to recast himself as a Silicon Valley haberdasher, and one of Google's earliest employees, Salar Kamangar, assumed the top spot.

Now, it looks like Google is making another move to bring the YouTube brand further under the Google umbrella — and just like Facebook's new default profile page, it's irking users who don't want to connect all the dots.Continue reading...