Youku Tudou Merger, Chinese Netizen Reactions

Youku Tudou merger.

On Sina Weibo:

@优酷网: Youku and Tudou announce merger, joining together to become the leading company in China’s online video industry. The Youku Tudou Limited Company established on a huge user base, diverse content, and powerful platform will lead China’s next generation online video revolution. After the merger, the new company will have even more impressive scale and powerful revenue conversion capabilities to achieve long term growth.

The above microblog post by Youku’s official Sina Weibo account was amongst the day’s most forwarded, having been shared over 55k times with over 13k comments within 12 hours of posting. Other postings by Sina Technology and Mop about the news are also amongst Weibo’s top trending posts for the day with tens of thousands of reshares and thousands of comments each.

The surprise announcement yesterday came after months of public fighting between the two Chinese online video streaming giants with accusations of illegal copyrighted content and unfair business practices.

Comments on Sina Weibo:

茶叶1852336157:

Why isn’t there an anti-monopoly law? This way, it will be the netizens who suffer!!!

苍南_染指寂:

Youku’s boss bedded Tudou’s boss’s wife, let’s merge.

柔安安安avaa:

China wants to use Youtudou to face off against Youtube?

南宫昀:

So you two really did get married. Alright, I once again believe in love.

取名字也太难了吧:

Television stations now have headaches. Originally they could sell to two websites and get money twice but now they’ve fucking merged. [偷笑]

Guitar丨灬A大调:

[可怜] Youku and Tudou, this pair of jiyou aren’t fighting anymore, so what are we waiting for?

虎迷王:

The next to merge will be McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pepsi and Coca-Cola.

8.逐笑黑白:

What a success! My two favorite websites… after they’re fused together, it’ll become a Chinese Super Saiyan named Youtudo to fight the American Voldemort Youtube. Sounds good, I don’t what the specific changes will be… [but] with the video world’s biggest and second biggest getting married, how are the other video websites going to survive?!! [偷笑]

吴娅姿:

I believe in love now! When will Colonel Sanders and Ronald McDonald become a family?

志乐着:

Suddenly remembered that my thesis is about the online video industry’s web portal advertising, and now that they’ve suddenly merged, all my data is of them separately, fuck…

映海凌云:

I prefer Tudou being independent. Hope Tudou won’t, because of the merger, become political. I like independent Tudou.

龙春洋:

This is good news! It’s annoying when there are too many video websites! [呵呵]

牧得儿:

Has no one noticed that when the two were going at each other, what you couldn’t find on Youku could be found on Tudou. Them two getting together…not surprising…

眼泪化成冰:

No matter how much they merge, Youku Tudou still can’t compete with YouTube, because the latter is global, while the former is a shanzhai version + the removal of the essence of freedom.

林林说:

A lot of the copyrights for films have been bought up by these two, and now that they’ve merged… it’s the beginning of a new monopoly… If we look at it positively, this helps the development of original/genuine work. Negatively it means new and smaller video websites won’t have any room to grow, that the prospects are dim for some entrepreneurs and workers in this industry, and the bad ones will close down and have to find new jobs.

发自内心的笑容:

Can you change the name? Youku Tudou? What kind of name is that? What are you guys doing, this news is too shocking.

hikari112:

All of this tells us that there are no permanent enemies in this world, that enemies can all of a sudden become your partner.

What do you think? Is this merger good or bad for the Chinese internet?

  • Wil

    whats so bad about this merger? i don’t understand why some netizens are concerned with such a move?

    • http://www.matthewsawtell.com Matthew A. Sawtell

      In a phrase? “All your sites belong to us…”

      • Bereaver

        Coming from a nerd, “All your sites are belong to us….”

        • staylost

          You have no choice in videostreaming websites.
          Make your time.

    • Stacy

      Same thing as why monopoly is bad for the economy, and why autocracy is bad for the country. If they are not subject to competition, then they are not operating at the most beneficial way to the society. But hey, what do I know right? This is China, the definition of autocratic government and state owned monopolies.

  • hail

    sofa?

    • Duce

      I love Youku and Tudou. LD (low defintion) videos with an interesting advertisement when the video starts and with another interesting advertisement when the video is finished. Great service!

  • Derek Xu

    Please post a list of all the government officials who took bribes related to this transaction.

  • lonetrey

    Ahaha Youtudou vs. Youtube? Interesting….

    • jin

      just so you know that most used online messenger worldwide= QQ and not msn. so yeah it might grow to be nr1

      • Patrick

        Yeah but for it to be a worthy contest the government would need to unblock youtube. Pretty sure the winner would be hands down youtube.

        • Ray Ray

          but you can’t stream most copyrighted stuff on youtube.

          • notorious

            actually i download any video i want from youtube right to my hard drive. you just need a very popular media player program which I shall not name.

      • Brett Hunan

        Anyone can figure out there are tons of internet users in China. When China does become more “globalized” we will see people there using MSN or whatever foreigners use too. It’s just that Chinese people’s friends are all Chinese. So they all use the Chinese services.

        Besides, with phone messaging systems, the computer based programs will die out like they are starting to back west. If you can write programs, make a free, add-based text messaging service in China. You will make Billions of RMB. That’s uncle Brett’s tip of the day.

        • > That’s uncle Brett’s tip of the day.

          I have no idea why, but I laughed. Thank you.

      • DRaY

        @Jin
        I would say QQ has the most users, but not necessarily the most “used” messenger “worldwide”, I don’t think it is very well known outside of China. Skype and MSN are still used more globally, by people in every country. Sorry… Chinese will never be number 1 at anything worthwhile.

      • staylost

        That is silly.

        China plays with a huge handicap, with their blocking of non-Chinese businesses, while the USA allows Chinese companies something close to free reign.

        I’ve never heard of someone using qq in the nation with the biggest economy in the world. I’m sure some poor soul does, but my point is that it is so rare that young internet savvy Americans don’t even care to know about qq, much less use it. The only reason qq is “nr. 1 worldwide” is because of someone wanted to screw over every Chinese person for the next five or six generations and realized “Glorious Mothers” would be the easiest way.

        If youTu makes it big internationally, it will be because it escapes from China or because China’s censorship laws disappear. Currently, the only reason it exists is because it’s channeling Kim Jung Il by not following international copyright law, and because China is too weak for competition.

        • Jess

          I can’t really agree with the first point. US consumer goods do well in China, along with the Coca-Colas and KFCs. Whereas Huawei can’t even buy out a completely unimportant company without paranoid American politicians getting in the way. I guess a lot of the “Would the Chinese let Americans do this in China?” rhetoric is usually answered by…”they already do.”
          It is amusing how QQ evolved from being an ICQ clone to an MSN one, though.

          • staylost

            Of course China has to let some foreign companies into China. How else were they going to get into the WTO and improve their ability to export? Besides the Chinese would revolt without their KFC (barf).

            Still, I hear what you are saying. It isn’t a broad sweeping block in all sectors, you are correct. I should have made sure to limit it to intellectual property or internet property.

            Lastly, I feel no sadness for Huawei, which has ties to the Chinese spy agency (yes, I’ve heard the long explanations as to why they aren’t part of it anymore; no I don’t believe it). I wouldn’t feel comfortable with a CIA puppet company installing my communications either. Spy agencies are naturally untrustworthy.

  • Mansu Musa

    Youku+Tudou = YouTu

    • http://www.kingbaeksu.com King Baeksu

      My vote is for “MeTu.”

  • DRaY

    I almost made a comment using the word, “Chinese Technology” , but then I realized that’s an oxymoron and It made me chuckle…
    Today is gonna be a good day ….

  • Johnny Basic

    I’ve not even glanced at either website since they took down all the foreign films last year.

  • Marl Karx

    There is absolutely no moral authority to say that they are merging to “take on Youtube”. Youtube is blocked in mainland China whereas Youku and Tudou are not blocked in the rest of the world, so the so-called “competition” is one-sided. Trust a Chinese company to “race” with another company after their competition is weighed down with heavy sidebags of bricks. The guy that commented that this is to “face off” with Youtube is out to lunch.

    • notorious

      youku is blocked. i tried to make an account there a long time ago and could not.

  • Hongjian

    As long as Youtube will be used by the US govt. to spread their destabilizing and civil wars inciting propaganda, it will be combatted and blocked by China. That Kony shit is pretty much obvious.

    Americunts who complain about no fair competition should learn it: As long as the USA exist as an imperialist fucker, she must first be hammered to death till China would allow them into the country to compete with Chinese local services.

    Every single american service/company/goods = ulterior motives in service of the US goverment.

    This is why, with america dead and destroyed: Everything is fine and the world will be free.

    • staylost

      Right.

      Those evil Americans allowing China to leg up by outsourcing their production should burn!!! If only this would haven’t happened and Americans had not allowed their companies to do business with China, then the United States would’ve been brought to its knees!

      Actually, youtube spreads every disease, not just those of the US government. While in China, every service/company/good has the sole motive of supporting the wonderfully tacky dress of our favorite NPC & CPPCC members as we just learned!

      The Chinese people are powerful alone. Their governments have always held them back and stripped them of their ability to lead the world. You really believe youtube could bring the Chinese down? I rather believe an open youtube would be dominated by confident Chinese.

      • Hongjian

        “Confident Chinese”

        Yeah, the same kind of Chinese who run after McDonalds, KFC and every imaginable western trend. And the same “confident chinese” who fall for bullshit like the Kony 2012 campaign.

        No, man. Chinese people are sheeples and tools. Stupid children at best. And they should be treated as such.

        China was, is, and will always be better ruled by an elite mandarinate . And if these elite mandarines happen to be cosmopolitian too, the better, as they would know the ways and temptations of the western bullshit, and decline the rest of their sheeples to enjoy it

        But somehow I agree with some few point. I would love to see the reactions of weibo liberals who worship everything western, when they are faced with the scorn and hate of the american and western population against China on an uncensored youtube. I would love to have a few more west hating fenqing being created, as they are exposed to the intense hate of the western population towards China.

        There’s a reason why foreign Chinese are usually more nationalistic than Chinese in China. That is because we have seen the real faces behind McDonalds, KFC, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Democracy and Freedom. A face of hate and pathologic, sick-minded ideologic monotheism and missionary, inquisitionary zeal. McCarthy all day every day.
        Familiarity breeds disgust. And I hope that, if one day the great firewall of china falls, more and more weibo sheeples and tools and kids will be disgusted with the indiscriminate, existencial hate of the westerners towards their nation and people.

        • Derek Xu

          I want to compliment China on its hilarious space walk video which was filmed in a swimming pool. Look it up on youtube. You can see bubbles floating up, plus stadium lights in the background. The “astronauts” (poolnauts?) never let go because the water will push them away from their fake spacecraft.

          Congratulations CCP on humiliating China with a fake spacewalk that everyone can see is fake. Only the most empty-headed nationalists still insist that a real spacewalk took place. Ha! Ha! CCP soooo stupid.

          • Hongjian

            yeah, a long, rectangular piece sure looks like a bubble. Anyway, believe what you want. I have yet to see Taiwan or Japan sending an astronaut into space independently while not riding the coat tails of the US or Europe, let alone to build a space station.

            This year there’s another manned launch scheduled. I look forward for you faggots to attempt to twist it into some new bullshit to wank off in your mental stages of desparation and denial.

          • Dannisi

            Not to fully criticize China, but most of their space technology is Russian…

        • notorious

          hmmm… hong jian, i can understand your frustration with the west after living among them. they don’t seem as saint like as some folks on the main land think them to be. but some of your comments… some times make me think that you are just a person who was born with a very evil soul.

          hate spills from your words like a broken blood vessel and i don’t think you’re trolling or goofing around as others think. i cannot imagine horrible thoughts that you write ever being concocted in my mind toward my fellow brothers in mankind.

      • Hongjian

        Also, I somehow agree with this:

        “The Chinese people are powerful alone. Their governments have always held them back and stripped them of their ability to lead the world.”

        I’ll just say: Harmonious World.

        Nowaday’s CCP is just as bad as the Ming-Dynasty during the time of Zheng He, letting his fleet rot away and not taking the chance to colonize the continents he visited and kill some fledgeling european colonialists for shits and giggles.
        I’ve always said it and will say it again: The CCP is cowardly and chickenshit to fight for all the interests of the Chinese people. They shouldnt hold the PLA back from invading worthless shitty americunt sheepdog nations in asia, as they shouldnt hold back China to finally move out and colonize the rest of the world and kill off all whites. All they talk is ‘harmonious world’ while the US is building bases around China and empowers dogshits like Vietnam and Burma to enact anti-chinese policies and harm Chinese investments and interests there, with no visible or effective reaction by the CCP. Official diplomatic protests is the only thing ever coming out from that goverment. No JDAMS, no cruise missiles, no nuclear first strikes, no amphibious invasions, no PLA special forces in stealth helicopters raiding Dharamsala and taking the head of the Dalai Lama.

        The CCP govt. indeed holds China back in leading the world as she deserves. She is the most cowardly govt. ever. I hope an ultra-nationalist, facist chinese government comes to power, and utilizes all the strenghts of the chinese people to further China’s interests unrestrained by “Harmony” and “Peaceful Rise”.

        If someone insults China, he must die. Simple as that. If the CCP wont understand this, she has lost the mandate of heaven and should just be toppled until a dynasty takes over that does.

        • Derek Xu

          China remains a backward and uncivilized nation. Just look at the rude behavior of the people, the fraud, poisonous food, deadly air and water pollution and buildings falling down. The PLA is all hot air and does not even dare attack Taiwan. Poor cowards.

          • Hongjian

            And Taiwan doesnt dare to declare formal independence. They have even voted against it. So cowardly and girlish, that even america’s nuclear umbrella and the seventh fleet cant man you up. Taiwanese: Eternal losers and japanese rape-babies. Lost the mainland, lost their UN-seat, lost their balls.

            So weak and pussified, that even rude behavior of the people, the fraud, poisonous food, deadly air and water pollution and buildings falling down will scare you shitless and make you curl into the corner while in fetal position and whining like a raped little girl.
            If you cant even deal with those mundane things in your accustomed luxury life in japanese colonialized Taiwan, how do you want to deal with the military consequences that a formal declaration of independence will bring down on you? Pussies.

            I know nothing worse than you guys. And I say that as someone who actually likes Taiwan in a sense.

          • Derek Xu

            Do I really have to argue the same points over and over again with mainland university graduates who cannot think their way out of a paper bag? Jeeeeez. Get an education and learn to reason. Your political views smell just like the toilets in China. You can be proud of that. And your arguments are as false and misleading as the fake Chinese space walk. Be proud of that too because you are a little man representing a little people.

          • Ray Ray

            lol, Trolllll!

        • notorious

          aye! I have as much reason to hate white people as anyone but i just don’t. i can’t muster the energy to hate or even think of killing anyone, hongjian I really wish you and I were the same. but of course my bleeding liberal heart also feels that you deserve to feel anyway you want, and have as much freedom to express your feelings in any manner you want.

          i also don’t think you are residing in mainland, you are most definitely writing from a euro nation. but i wonder, if people there have been racist or negligient toward you and thus the resentment you feel.

    • Derek Xu

      So sad to see another malfunctioning brain due to mainland education which teaches no analysis or reasoning skills.

      • Glowndark

        Xu, if you have that chinese blood in you, you’d better stfu! comrade Hongjian did not even aim at you, and you stepped in, wtf? there’ll be a day when you realize that the west despise your kind no matter what you do.

        More ammo for comrade Hongjian, support your every words, facts presented verified by your overseas comrade!

        • Hongjian

          Western world only like Monkeys, not peers.

          Either you are white, or you are a monkey. Asian races in general are just yellow monkeys for them.
          They do not accept and take serious asian people as humans with their own distinct culture that is equal to theirs, but only holds us as strange, funny curiosities to laught at and to watch at behind bars of a cultural zoo.
          Sometimes they favor one race of monkeys to subjugate another race of monkeys who are resisting their domination, telling their favored race that they arent monkeys but “people” too. In case of the Taiwanese, South Koreans and Japanese, the white people glossed over their past and present savagery and declared them as ‘honorary whites’ as long as it takes them to help bringing down the last independent and distinct cultures on earth into their hegemony, destroying their cultures and systems to become carbon copies and cultural disneylands and zoos of theirs.

          For once, even though the white man apparently hates if people copy their inventions, they do are aggressive in forcing monkeys at gunpoint to copy their culture, religion and political ideologies, replacing their own distinct ones, as it proves to be first-rate masturbationary goods for the egoes of the white man, supporting him in his pathologic delusional notion of the white man’s burden and superiority.

          After this happened, all of these monkeys and tools will go back to be mere monkeys for the white man’s pleasures.

          The Taiwanese too, will lose their ‘honorary white’-status, after the mainland has been brought down, as they have expended their usefulness. Then, they will be as much despised and laughed at as the ordinary mainland nongming; for his silly language, for his silly culture, for his disgusting looking food, for his disgusting yellow skin and short build, for his slant eyes, for his apparent physical inferiority, and lastly, for his apparent spiritual and cultural inferiority for following the western cultural domnation and political ideologies as a fellow vassal.

          There’s a reason that the US probes sent into space carry a golden pioneer badge with the drawing of a caucasian man and caucasian women on it – as if all aliens who may visit the earth someday should know that the white man is the sole ruler and representative of the human race, and not other, more numerous races.

          http://pixabay.com/en/pioneer-badge-pioneer-10-space-probe-11055/

          This badge carries not the drawing of Taiwanese, Japanese or South Korean ‘honorary non-monkeys’, no matter how democratic and western oriented they are. Looks like that their acceptance-level by the white man wasnt sufficient enough to lift them out of their racial worthlessness for space aliens to take note of them… Probably on the same level of animals and bacteria, who also arent featured on that badge, despite being more numerous than white people.

          This just speaks volume of the sick, delusional and narcistic mind of the politically western born white race.

          So, taiwan-bros… Keep following your master. Maybe he will some day in the future give you a banana to eat and sell your monkey-paintings to rich liberal yuppies. Because this is will be the happiest day in your pathetic life without dignity, being acknowledged by the white man as an artistic monkey.

          You still wont get featured on that pioneer badge, though. A picasso monkey is still a bad representative of mankind.

          • moop

            actually the whole “monkey” thing you just described accurqately describes the way many chinese look at other non-chinese asians. they always call the filippinos and vietnamese monkeys. only 华人 are the non-monkey asians.

          • Hongjian

            Yeah, thus the Philippines and Vietnamese get the ‘honorary non-monkey’ title by the americans, so that they may join them in their fight with China.

            After the fight, they will return to being monkeys with no hope being featured in any Times frontpage ever again. Let alone on a badge tacked on a space vessel.

  • lonetrey

    ….

  • typingfromwork

    Companies like this get bought out by each other eventually. don’t forget Youtube itself was bought out by Google and no one’s saying anti-monopoly boo hoo’s now. Shit, Google search for videos now defaults to Youtube (though they still have the webwide video search tucked away somewhere).

    Big businesses will always follow the course that will lead to greater profits. Maybe it will benefit their customers, maybe not. But really, Google has a near monopoly and the web isn’t exactly worse off for it. Time will tell, I guess.

  • Foreign Devil

    I bought stock in Youku awhile back. which was my worst stock move ever and the last time I ever invest in a Chinese company (sino Forest anyone?)

    The buyout gave me a nice jump in stock value but still nowhere near it’s early day highs. Now if only I had invested in Tudou instead. .it jumped 140% in one day after the buyou . would have more than doubled my money.

    • Hongjian

      >2012
      >buying chinese stocks

      lol. you would have better invested you rmoney into horse or dog races, or chicken fights in your nearest local village.
      Chinese stock market is only a larger and legalized casino with the large companies and syndicates manipulating the dices.

      • Foreign Devil

        Right. Well keep in mind i invested before all these Chinese companies on the international stock market started getting investigated for cooking their books. My thinking was that since regular TV in China was such crap. . that Chinese netizens would be using Youku in mass numbers for entertainment. .It’s true they are. . .but Youku hasn’t found a way to really monetize it. . well they are spending more than they are earning. . Lesson learned. Having seen how poorly run the Chinese companies I worked for were, I should have known better.

  • FYIADragoon

    Its always cute how the Chinese consider their products to have the “largest amount of users” when thats entirely due to the size of their country and government support whereas youtube actually has viewers because of the company’s own talent.

  • dim mak

    Saw it coming. The whole lawsuit about who violated what copyright was nothing more than a bitchslapping contest disguised as legal action. Truth is, both violate copyright laws to a ridiculous extent and will probably continue even after the merger.

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