YouTorrent Goes Legal, and Up For Sale
Written by Ernesto on April 13, 2008In just a matter of weeks since its launch, YouTorrent has become one of the most popular BitTorrent meta-search engines. This weekend, however, it revealed a shift in strategy and it now only indexes sites that host torrent files linking to “licensed” content.
Unsurprisingly, the enormous success of the site even inspired others to start similar projects. None of these came close to YouTorrent’s success, which now attracts over 10 million unique visitors a month.
YouTorrent’s selling points are the great interface, an ad-less design, and its ability to search most of the bigger BitTorrent sites. The latter has changed though, and this might very well be the end of YouTorrent’s popularity.
Patrick, one of the people running YouTorrent told TorrentFreak: “Due to the uncertain nature of the source and accuracy of the results returned by some engines, we have decided to reduce our engine selection to ones that claim the provision of licensed, certified content.”
It doesn’t stop there. YouTorrent is not only going ‘legal’, but Patrick is also looking into selling the site. “The YouTorrent project has grown very quickly and unfortunately is not in line with the owning companies core business,” Patrick said.
“We have had some interest [to buy] from some parties. On that basis, we have presented the site to other parties in the space to see if there is interest there also,” he added.
It is unfortunate to see that YouTorrent has to throw in the towel only 4 months after it launched. One thing is clear, they haven’t made any money so far, since there weren’t any ads on the site. Selling the site could make the YouTorrent team quite a few bucks though, it almost looks like this was the plan anyway.
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119 Responses
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what a dumb move. what good is a search engine if ends up censoring results?
*sigh* such a great site, such a sad demise.
Well, while Demonoid reestablishes itself, I guess I’m off to Pizza Torrent.
Huh;
I liked youTorrent, have been using it more and more to catch up on some TV shows; sellouts.
Legal torrents are a significant fraction of torrent trade, and are an extremely important part of torrent trade.
But illegal torrents are a much more significant fraction of torrent trade, and are a much much more important part of torrent trade.
The censorship and loss of digital freedom on the internet alone are sufficient moral justification for an underground data system; while this underground can and should incorporate all data - including legal data - into its domain, the instant it becomes as censored as the internet is the instant it not only becomes as degenerate as the internet, but loses all value and credibility.
And youTorrent has implemented censorship of this underground digital system.
YouTorrent, you might not die; but your traffic is going to drop 90%+;
the rest of the world is censored, we will not stand for this last refuge to be violated.
I encourage you to enter the legal market, and I hope you flourish; but I will not stand for blanket censorship, and therefore you have dropped from go-to guy for everything, to one of many options for legal torrents.
Good Day, sir.
PizzaTorrent > YouTorrent
fuck, it was good, why the hell did they make suicide by making it “legal”
You torrent, u made the whole torrent world look really sick today!!!Fuckers!
Do these people (the ones running it and anyone who’d now be interested in buying it) have the IQ of a cabbage?
Are they really stupid enough to think that the site will maintain the same level of popularity after they’ve eliminated the number one reason people used it?
I wonder who will be stupid enough to waste good money on buying YouTorrent ?
Well, every day there is a new rich fool …
Any proof on 10m uniques? Or just taking what Jonathan tells you for fact?
still surfing http://www.toorents.to as I never used this shaky meta searches.
This was no doubt the plan all along. Who’d be stupid enough to buy it now? Past traffic volume will have no bearing on it’s value after the changes, and could not be used to gauge it’s worth.
“Due to the uncertainty of linked torrents” meaning “we’ve decided to turn traitor to bittorrent due to our greed and want to see if some sucker will buy it so we can sellout”
CORRECT: http://www.torrents.to
sorry…
Who would invest? Your not going to get no where near the visitors by searching legal torrents only.
Its crazy how many people dog on such projects. IF you hate it move on. Like the owners said the project get to big to fast for them and they dont know what to do. 10mil is not wrong just look at how many back links they have. and how many comments on this blog. I hope they get a good price. Alot of time went in to the project.
[quote comment="344277"][quote comment="344214"]Sounds like a smart business move. Having a popular interface that indexes only legal torrents will certainly encourage publishers to use BT as a distribution method. There are some drawbacks to publishing legit content on sites otherwise associated with piracy and this might be the fix.[/quote]
Sounds like a idiotic business move for anyone who purchases the site for anything more than what the domain name is worth.
THIS IS A CLASSIC BAIT AND SWITCH
YouTorrent SUX! There business plan, pertaining to their site users, reads as follows: “Find’em, F@ck’em, Forget’em!”
Deleted from my bookmarks also![/quote]
Damn Well Said !!
And Youtorrent .. Blow Me.
I will give YouTorrent 10 cents to own the site. But I would like to be able to claim it back on tax. Because when I buy it my losses will be huge. I may go bankrupt.
PizzaTorrent fills the gap just fine.
agreed, i used to love the site, but its gone from my bookmarks, so long youtorrent.
have they just made it legit to make it more sellable? anything stopping the new owner putting it back the way it was?
YouTorrent was my favorite torrent engine! Now it’s useless…
I liked that they supported Linux and Mozilla.
PizzaTorrent is the only other halfway-decent engine of that kind. I preferred YT though.
Dont give a crap what they do with the site, its ‘LEGAL’ now so it was dead at that moment, the rest is irrelevant.
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