YouTube Acquisition Nearly Fell Apart When Cofounder Found That a Google Employee Snooped on Revenue Figures (businessinsider.com) 9
An anonymous reader shares a report: On the eve of Google's acquisition of YouTube in 2006, the video site's cofounder Chad Hurley discovered that a Google ad manager had snooped on YouTube's revenue figures. Hurley was so irked by the invasion of YouTube's business that he threatened to walk away from the deal, a new book about YouTube's founding reveals. Google's CEO at the time, Eric Schmidt, was able to calm Hurley down enough to close the $1.65 billion deal -- a deal that became a pivot point in the development of the modern internet. The previously unreported episode comes from the book "Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination" by the Bloomberg reporter Mark Bergen.
21st Century Victimhood. Again. (Score:1, Informative)
"Hurley was so irked by the invasion of YouTube's business that he threatened to walk away from the deal..."
Two mega-corps involved in a billion (as in "b") dollar deal. The FUCK makes anyone assume that detailed financial information wouldn't eventually be part of ongoing discussions? This is what NDAs are for, and I'm quite certain lawyers ensured they were signed months before the deal went down. "Leaking" financial information should have never been a concern the day before.
Sensationalist bullshit for book-selling sake. The fuck else is new.
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There should have been a Chinese wall between the different departments at Google. The big concern would be that Google is trading on private information that no other buyer would have.
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If this is a problem such a corp should be split like AT&T was.
Proof yet again... (Score:5, Insightful)
... that Eric Schmidt, the "adult supervision" at Google while it was "growing up", was a shitty "parent":
Google snooped on YouTube's revenue figures? (Score:2)
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> How, the article is a little light on details.
GMail seems like the most likely possibility.
Would be interesting to know.