Youku.com Receives $25 Million In Funding

There’s seems to be some small, subtle thing that keeps Google from succeeding in China.  Unfortunately, I can’t identify it (the ability to do that is probably worth a lot of money).  But as further proof of its existence, a Chinese YouTube clone just received $25 million in funding.

YouTube, Youku . . . as you can see, both companies’ names even start with the same three letters.  My inability to read Chinese makes further comparisons somewhat impossible, however, so we’ll have to move on to the business aspects of the deal.

Lynn Qu reports, “The investment was led by US venture capital firm Bain Capital subsidiary Brookside Capital Partners and the three existing Youku.com investors Sutter Hill Ventures, Farallon Capital Management and Chengwei Ventures.”  Those names might not be too famous – the most noteworthy thing about them is Sutter Hill’s tie to NVIDIA – but they’ve obviously got money.

Youku will use (some of) that money to do all the normal solidify-and-expand stuff one might expect.  This shouldn’t be a from-the-ground-up operation, though; the service is already rather popular, with Qu stating that “videos are broadcast more than 70 million times a day.”

So, for better or for worse (we’re not used to feeling sorry for Google) online video may be yet another market in China in which the American giant’s looking at some extremely tough competition.