As TechCrunch first reported and the WSJ confirmed Google has put a 10 digit bid on the table for YouTube, and the founders are sitting down to talk.

For the analysts the first questions will be all about the money? The value? Will Google ever make it back? The second set of questions will focus on implications for major competitors; Yahoo and the all but moribund AOL. All of this will take much time and many blogs, columns, and words.

But let’s skip ahead to the broader implications of this deal, whenever it is finalized.

The sale of YouTube signals a change in the game for all the players involved in the on-going merger of Video and the Web. The idea that video is the way people share their experiences is no longer in the proof of concept stage. It’s a given.

Now we are on to Level 2. Who can improve consumers’ experience with Video the fastest? What was about community, now changes to utility. In other words every video community site that expects to survive on offering just sharing and storage can turn off their servers and go home.

Videoegg and Jumpcut (Yahoo’s purchase was prescient) are the beginning but that’s all they are. Consumers need editors that weren’t designed by video-editors (think point and shoot, not SLR) and tools to find and manage all the video they are playing with. They need ways to get all their Video in one place, regardless of the source, plus the ability to share across all of the appliances they now view videos on. And it all has to be easy, easy, easy. These are the tools that will determine the winners of the Video-Web game two years from now.

So that is where the money will go. Once all the other questions are answered.

Kathy Sharpe, CEO

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