Google saved YouTube, so Big Tech isn’t always harmful to start-ups, argues top Silicon Valley investor
Sequoia partner Michael Moritz defended Google’s 2006 acquisition of YouTube, saying it “saved” the video service in the $1.65 billion deal, as it was being ravaged by copyright threats over unlicensed music that users were posting.
“The killing fields at YouTube, it certainly wasn’t Google. The killing fields were called Universal, Warner, Sony with their battalions and phalanxes of lawyers, their ferocious attack dog agents, who were making these extraordinary threats of annihilation to this little company that for the first 8 or 9 months of their existence worked out of our office,” Moritz said, referring to three music companies that had aired complaints about alleged copyright infringement on YouTube’s service prior to the sale.
