Sony Pictures is going to announce an acquisition of Grouper sometime today, a long-time (launched way back in 2004) online video startup for a reported $65 million. Out of all those crazy acquisition rumors that have been floating around for the past few weeks — months, infact — who would've thought something like this would be it?
Grouper is an application like tens of others (but, ironically, was the first one there) which do online video. Their motto is 'Watch, Share, Create,' and simply enough, they allow you watch and share videos YouTube style, and create and edit your own ones with their free Grouper 2.0 application. Sony's main benefit and reason of this acquisition, however, is their custom P2P network protocol system which they're going to inherit and use.
So, it's obvious that out of all the big technology companies of the world, Sony was (before this acquisition took place) one of the only few that hadn't laid its hands on Web 2.0, infact, it had never even acknowledged it. So this is their move to get in the game. What's funny is that before yesterday when I wrote the 'Friendster Gets $10m More,' I'd never ever even heard of Grouper. In that post I mention DAG Ventures, the firm which supplied Friendster with their additional $10 million who ironically also happened to be one of Grouper's investors. Now I see where they must've got that $10 million.
