Google, the ubiquitous American Internet and software giant with a market capitalization of approximately $225 billion, announced a $34 billion investment--some say it looks more like a takeover--in the Internet pornography industry.
CEO Larry Page, one of America's youngest billionaires at 37 years old, disclosed their purchase of 13 premier adult-oriented websites. Google's newest acquisitions include the popular youporn.com and porntube.com, bought for $6 billion each.
"We already own YouTube so we felt an inherent duty to take YouPorn and PornTube," reasoned Page, referring to Google's 2006 purchase of the popular online video posting site, youtube.com, for a reported $1.65 billion in stock. "And we can agree that porn always has been and always will be the backbone of the Internet."
Founded in 1996 by Page and his fellow Stanford computer science PhD student Sergey Brin, Google's meteoric rise to riches and prominence facilitated its continuing spending spree over the past dozen years, buying a wide variety of Internet companies to increase the Google footprint. In May 2012, to cite a recent example, Google acquired a leading telecommunications firm, Motorola Mobility, for more than $12 billion.
One prominent piece of the World Wide Web Google had yet to pursue--before this week--was adult entertainment.
Page explained that credit for Google's X-rated transition belongs mostly to his partner, Brin, who used a slice of his own share of the Google fortune to amass one of the largest personal collections of "Big Beautiful Women" (BBW) DVDs known to exist.
"Sure, Google Videos will take you to the porn, but the gold mine here is in production, not location," the 39-year old Brin smiled, "and now we've got a seat at the big table."
Indeed, the online titan purchased another 11 of the most prominent adult pages including www.xnxx.com, a site featuring a wide variety of videos as well as XXX photos and erotic stories.
"And I think what might turn out to be our most valued pickup of all is the dirty dating sites," Brin added, referring to Google's multi-billion dollar acquisition of swingers dating websites AdultFriendFinder and Fling. "Did you know that last year online dating services took in about a billion dollars, in the US alone?"
Brin said they have plans to specially promote their newest enterprise on the Web on New Year's Day. On January 1, 2013, the Google search engine, which performs several hundred million searches per day, will return nothing but pornographic links.