Sony gets its feet wet with Grouper

Sony made a big splash in the Web video market this week, acquiring Grouper for $65 million.

Grouper, the eighth-largest video sharing site, will become part of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which produces movies and TV shows. The idea, apparently, is to use the site to sell movies, along with consumer electronics and music, to the target audience.

The video sharing market is certainly getting hot. But $65 million seems pretty pricey for a site that's got less than 1 percent of the market.

Blog community response:

"Of course, it looks like Sony was most attracted to Grouper's yet-to-be-launched P2P technology for eventual movie distribution, meaning YouTube comparisons are inappropriate. $65 million is still a lot to pay, however."
--TechCrunch

"This is seriously, seriously, nuts. The company that does its best to ruin music for all of us with its crappy rootkits and DRM technology buys a video sharing service...Wonder how long it takes till Grouper dies....6 months, 12 months? With Sony's track record it will only be a matter of time until they make the site so unworkable, unusable and undesirable that it will die an inglorious death."
--Duncanriley.com

"Sixty-five million seems like an amazing amount of money for Sony to pay when they could have created the same service themselves. Maybe they know that consumers hate them and they want to hide behind someone else's name, but if this turns out to be true, you can bet that I won't be fooled into thinking that Grouper is an independent site when I know that the studio bosses are really running the show."
--Davis Freeberg's Digital Connection